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THE  HERITAGE 
of  THE  SOUTH 

A  HISTORY  OF 
THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  SLAVERY 
ITS  ESTABLISHMENT  FROM  COLONIAL  TIMES 
AND  FINAL  EFFECT  UPON 
THE  POLITICS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 


By 

JUBAL  A.  EARLY 


MEMBER  OF  THE  YIEGINIA  CONVENTION  OF  1861 


Copyright  1915 
By  R.  H.  early 


PRESS  OF 
BROWN-MORRISON  CO 
LYNCHBURG,  VA. 


Editor's  Note 


A  review  is  given,  in  the  pages  following,  of  the  causes 
which  led  to  the  political  issue  of  the  '60s;  an  issue  which 
will  be  open  to  argument  until,  in  all  of  its  bearings,  it  be- 
comes understood  through  familiarity  with  the  conditions 
of  the  past.  Sentiment  divorced  from  reason  occasioned 
misconception.  Many  causes  contributed  to  that  effect. 
The  lack  of  authentic  records  doubtless  was  one ;  certainly 
ill-advised  publications  inflamed,  if  they  did  not  inspire, 
public  opinion  at  this  critical  period. 

The  author  Avas  actuated  by  the  desire  to  correct  er- 
roneous opinion  in  relation  to  the  South.  His  manuscript 
has  lain  unpublished  during  the  passing  of  half  a  century, 
till  passion  having  cooled  and  prejudice  abated,  there  is  no 
longer  reason  for  clash  from  difference  of  feeling  upon  the 
subject. 

The  African  slave  trade  began  in  the  year  1442,  when 
Anthony  Gonsalez,  a  Portuguese,  took  from  the  Gold  Coast, 
ten  negroes,  which  he  carried  to  Lisbon.  In  1481,  the 
Portuguese  built  a  fort  on  the  Gold  Coast,  and  as  early  as 
1502,  the  Spaniards  began  to  employ  negroes  in  the  mines 
of  Hispaniola.  In  1517,  Charles  V,  Emperor  of  Spain, 
granted  a  patent  to  certain  persons,  for  the  supply  of  4,000 
negroes,  annually,  to  the  islands  of  Hispaniola,  Cuba, 
Jamaica  and  Porto  Rico.  John  Hawkins,  afterwards 
knighted  by  Queen  Elizabeth,  got  into  his  possession,  partly 
by  the  sword  and  partly  by  other  means,  300  negroes,  and 
sold  them  in  the  West  Indies.  Hawkins '  second  voyage  was 
patronized  by  Queen  Elizabeth,  who  participated  in  the 
profits ;  and  in  1618,  in  the  reign  of  James  I,  the  British 


government  established  a  regular  trade  on  the  coast  of 
Africa. 

When  negotiations  for  the  slave  traffic  were  first  agitated, 
the  cost  to  the  victim  seems  not  to  have  been  considered. 
The  white  man's  need — or  greed — demanded  sacrifice. 
The  negro,  a  product  of  the  ' '  three-cornered  rum,  slave  and 
molasses  trade"  was  brought  to  New  England  to  a  condi- 
tion offering  few  advantages  beyond  certain  comforts 
which  were  to  be  provided  by  the  master  who  was  to  as- 
sume all  the  obligations  of  the  position. 

"Wrenched  from  his  home,  separated  from  his  people, 
exiled  to  a  foreign  land,  which  was  governed  by  laws  main- 
tained through  penalties,  the  enforced  emigrant  was  set  to 
labor  in  unaccustomed  ways  under  uncongenial  circum- 
stances. 

The  experiment  of  settling  him  in  a  manufacturing  sec- 
tion proved  disadvantageous  to  the  investor.  The  demand 
for  field  labor  furnished  a  Southern  market ;  this  occasioned 
his  removal  to  that  part  of  the  country,  his  aptitude  for 
the  work  kept  him  there. 

His  insurrectionary  spirit  made  his  training  difficult.  It 
was  a  trial  of  endurance  for  master  as  well  as  apprentice, 
but  custom  and  good  treatment  tamed  the  wild  nature  of 
the  latter  and  converted  him  into  an  important  factor  in 
Southern  industries ;  to  this  day  none  other  has  been  found 
to  take  his  place  in  cotton  or  tobacco  field. 

He  was  also  a  form  of  property,  and  laws  were  made  in 
that  connection.  That  instances  of  abuse  on  the  part  of  the 
owner  arose  was  axiomatical — such  is  the  history  of  life  in 
every  sphere,  and  that  was  neither  a  Utopian  age  nor 
country. 

Having  served  its  aim,  the  slave  trade  diminished,  then 
ceased.  The  attitude  of  those  engaging  in  and  encouraging 
it  altered,  the  base  of  operations  changed,  and  there  re- 
mained only  the  people  of  the  slave-holding  states  (upon 


whom  now  fell  the  responsibility  of  the  support  of  these 
nation  wards)  with  any  reason  for  interest  in  the  subject. 
Perhaps  it  was  inevitable  that  diverging  interest  should 
arise  to  cause  the  politics  of  the  country  to  become  affected 
through  distrust  of  those  who  owned  that  particular  form 
of  property. 

Originally  acquired  as  a  necessity,  the  slave's  value  les- 
sened and  the  burden  on  his  master  increased,  as  other  in- 
terests divided  hig  attention.  Legislation  was  resorted  to 
without  success  in  the  enactment  of  measures  for  the 
abolishment  of  a  system  so  firmly  rooted. 

In  1805,  Mr.  Jefferson  wrote  "I  have  given  up  all  ex- 
pectation of  any  early  provision  for  the  extinguishment  of 
slavery  among  us.  There  are  many  virtuous  men  who 
would  make  any  sacrifices  to  effect  it,  many  equally  virtu- 
ous who  believe  it  cannot  be  remedied."  In  1814,  however, 
Mr.  Jefferson  again  urged  the  policy  of  emancipation. 

That  many  owners  were  in  sympathy  with  this  proposed 
disposition  of  a  vexed  problem,  is  manifest  from  the  records 
of  the  courts,  which  show  that  slaves  were  sent  to  Liberia, 
settled  in  the  free  states,  permitted  to  purchase  their 
freedom,  bequeathed  land  and  liberty  by  the  masters  who 
had  held  them. 

A  strange  condition  existed  in  the  holding  of  slaves  by 
free  negroes.  These  were  to  be  found  in  nearly  all  of  the 
colonies  and  states  where  there  were  slaves.  In  some 
counties  they  were  numerous,  while  in  others  they  were 
unknown.  In  certain  states  this  condition  was  at  times 
forbidden  by  law,  but  often  continued  in  spite  of  the  law, 
tolerated  or  ignored;  the  laws  upon  the  subject  also  varied 
from  time  to  time.  In  other  states  free  negroes  were  given 
the  privilege  of  being  masters  by  special  statute  or  this 
liberty  was  covered  by  general  laws. 

Certain  good  was  accomplished  by  the  transportation  of 
the  African  savage  to  a  congenial  clime  among  those  who 


trained  him  to  become  a  useful  citizen.  Under  the  tutelage 
of  his  master,  he  was  guided,  stage  by  stage,  along  the  path- 
way to  civilization  by  the  law  he  recognized  in  his  native 
land — that  of  coercion — till  he  attained  his  present  status. 
Standing  upon  this  vantage  ground,  it  remains  for  him  to 
work  out  his  further  advancement  and  to  discover  the  posi- 
tion he  can  maintain.  In  the  fact  that  some  have  made 
strides  forward,  and  thus  fitted  themselves  as  leaders  of  the 
race,  lies  the  hope  and  inspiration  for  the  rest,  an  encourag- 
ing factor  being  the  imitative  faculty  with  which  many  are 
gifted. 

Criticism  today  discovers  that  in  the  portrayal  of  the 
character  of  "Uncle  Tom"  Mrs.  Stowe  paid  a  glowing 
tribute  to  the  achievement  of  the  Southern  master.  Africa 
has  not  done  as  much  for  the  brother  left  upon  her  soil, 
nor  has  the  foreign  missionary.  "We  may  still  read  of  such 
practices  as  cannibalism  on  the  western  coast  of  the  dark 
continent — even  along  the  trail  of  the  religious  enthusiast. 
Taking  then  into  account  what  has  been  accomplished,  the 
Kilaim  that  the  Southern  master  was  the  most  successful 
.m^issionary  can  easily  be  proved. 

We  have  no  doubt  but  that  some  cause  other  than  the 
avarice  of  the  white  man  led  to  the  rescue  of  the  man  of 
color  from  a  life  of  ignorance  and  barbarism — to  his  ex- 
patriation to  this  country  of  opportunity — to  his  settle- 
ment under  apprenticeship  calculated  to  encourage  self- 
helpfulness  by  developing  his  capabilities.  To  this  end  he 
passed  through  the  probationary  period  of  servitude. 

General  Early's  review  of  the  situation  previous  to  the 
war,  as  here  presented,  illustrates  the  point  of  view  of  the 
people  of  the  South.  His  attitude  towards  slavery 
took  its  color  from  his  familiarity  with  the  institution  as  it 
existed  in  the  homes  of  those  to  whom  it  had  become  a 
natural  condition  of  life.  It  was  so  incorporated  with  their 
daily  living,  and  with  the  traditions  of  generations,  that 


they  became  accustomed  to  it  without  considering  the  rea- 
sons for  its  establishment. 

The  author  was  never  an  investor  in  slaves,  although  he 
always  possessed  a  negro  servant.  One  who  served 
till  age  enfeebled  him,  was  retired  on  a  pension.  Another, 
cut  short  in  his  service  by  fatal  disease,  was  respectfully 
followed  to  his  last  resting  place  by  the  master  upon  whom 
in  health  he  had  attended.  His  thoughtful  care  of  his  at- 
tendants and  his  liberality  when  trouble  overtook  them,  v/on 
their  affection  and  respect. 

It  may  be  understood  then  that  interest  in  slaves  as  prop- 
erty did  not  enter  into  his  defense  of  slavery  as  an  institu- 
tion of  his  country.  No  selfish  thought  prompted  the  use 
of  his  pen  in  the  exposition  of  the  unfairness  of  opinion 
abroad — but,  imbued  with  a  keen  sense  of  right,  he  was 
actuated  by  the  desire  to  dissipate  that  injustice  which  took 
possession  of  many  minds — coloring  their  views  and  prov- 
ing barriers  to  their  sympathies. 

To  make  clear  his  point  of  view  by  stating  the  true 
conditions  which  brought  about  slavery  in  the  South  and 
to  define  the  relation  which  existed  betw^een  master  and 
slave,  was  the  purpose  of  General  Early  in  writing  this 
real  story  of  slavery  as  it  was  established  in  America,  and 
as  it  continued  to  exist  in  that  section  of  which  it  became 
the  heritage. 

R.  H.  Early. 


Contents 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I— The  African  Slave  Trade   11 

II — Origin  of  Slavery  in  the  United  States   16 

III —  Legislation  on  the  Question  of  State  Establishment,  36 

IV —  Causes  Leading  to  Secession — Secession  of  the 

Cotton  States    62 

V — Action  of  the  Border  Slave  States — Convention  of 

Virginia   88 

VI— The  Right  to  Withdraw   94 

VII — Injurious  Effect  of  Misinformation  110 


Come  now  let  us  reason  together 


The  Heritage  of  the  South 


CHAPTER  I 

Ws:\t  Afrtratt  #kti]?  ®rab^ 

The  struggle  for  independence  made  by  the  Sonthem 
States  of  the  American  Union,  grew  out  of  questions  of  self 
government  arising  mainly  in  regard  to  the  institution  of 
African  slavery  as  it  existed  in  those  states,  and  as  that  in- 
stitution was  the  occasion  for  the  development  of  the  difficul- 
ties which  led  immediately  to  the  struggle,  the  conduct  of  the 
states  lately  forming  the  Southern  Confederacy  has  been 
misunderstood,  therefore,  misrepresented,  with  the  effect  of 
casting  upon  them  not  only  the  odium  of  originating  the 
war,  but  even  for  the  existence  and  continuance  of  slavery 
itself. 

Much  misapprehension  has  existed  in  the  minds  even  of 
intelligent  foreigners  upon  these  subjects  and  it  is  therefore 
not  inappropriate  to  take  a  retrospective  view  of  the  history 
of  slavery  in  general  and  especially  of  the  slave  trade  and 
of  slavery  in  the  United  States,  as  well  as  of  the  questions 
which  led  to  the  secession  of  the  Southern  States  and  to  the 
war  consequent  thereon. 

It  is  said  that  the  Portuguese  began  the  traffic  in  slaves 
on  the  coast  of  Africa  in  the  15th  century,  and  that  at  the 
beginning  of  the  16th  century  negro  slaves  had  become  quite 
common  in  Portugal. 

After  the  discovery  of  America,  the  Spaniards  made 
slaves  of  the  Indians  and  employed  them  in  their  first  set- 
tlements in  the  newly  discovered  country,  but  the  supply 
not  being  found  sufficient  and  the  Indians  not  being  very 
well  adapted  for  the  purpose  in  the  tropical  regions,  negro 
slaves  were  introduced  from  Africa — the  first  being  im- 


12 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


ported  into  Hispaniola  (St.  Domingo),  in  the  year  1503. 
The  example  of  Spain  in  regard  to  the  use  of  negro  slaves 
in  her  American  Colonies  was  f ollov/ed  by  all  the  other 
nations  of  Europe,  who  undertook  the  colonization  of  the 
newly  found  continent  and  islands,  to-wit :  the  Portuguese, 
English,  French,  Dutch,  Danes  and  Swedes. 

Sir  John  Hawkins,  an  English  admiral  and  adventurer, 
was  the  first  Englishman  known  to  have  engaged  in  the 
African  slave  trade,  and  he  carried  his  first  cargo  to  the 
Spanish  West  India  islands  about  the  year  1562.  Eeport 
says  that  Queen  Elizabeth  became  a  partner  in  and  shared 
the  profits  of  his  subsequent  voyages  in  the  prosecution  of 
"the  trade.  From  that  time  the  African  slave  trade  became 
a  regular  branch  of  English  commerce,  and  was  conducted 
in  its  first  stages  principally  under  monopolies  granted  to 
companies,  in  the  profits  of  which  members  of  the  Royal 
family,  noblemen,  courtiers  and  churchmen,  as  well  as  mer- 
chants, shared,  as  was  the  practice  in  those  days  in  all  im- 
portant branches  of  commerce. 

From  the  restriction  under  Charles  II,  the  African  trade, 
including  that  in  slaves,  was  monopolized  by  the  Royal 
African  Company"  for  a  number  of  years;  and  that  com- 
pany built  and  established,  on  the  coast  of  Africa,  forts  and 
factories  for  the  purpose  of  facilitating  and  protecting  the 
trade;  but  in  the  year  1698,  the  slave  trade  was  thrown 
open  to  private  traders,  upon  the  payment  to  the  company 
of  a  certain  percentage  towards  the  support  of  its  forts  and 
factories. 

The  growing  demand  in  Europe  for  colonial  products 
now  gave  a  new  impulse  to  the  slave  trade,  and  its  profits 
were  very  great.  It  was  not  only  recognized  by  the  govern- 
ment, but  was  sustained  by  the  universal  public  sentiment 
in  England,  and  was  fostered  and  cherished  by  Parliament 
as  a  lucrative  traffic. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


13 


In  the  Tear  1713.  by  the  treaty  of  Utrecht,  the  Assienio, 
a  contract  originally  entered  into  by  the  Spanish  govern- 
ment with  a  company  of  French  merchants  for  a  monopoly 
by  the  latter  of  the  trade  in  slaves  to  Spanish  America,  was^ 
assigned  to  the  South  Sea  Company.  By  the  terms  of  this 
contract  4.800  negro  slaves  vere  to  be  furnished  to  the 
Spanish  colonies  annually  for  thirty  years,  the  company 
being  privileged  to  introduce  as  many  more  as  could  be 
sold. 

In  this  company  Queen  Anne  and  the  King  of  Spain 
became  stockholders,  as  did  a  large  portion  of  the  nobility, 
gentry,  churchmen,  and  merchants  of  England.  England 
thus  sought  a  monopoly  of  the  entire  slave  trade,  at  least 
so  far  as  her  ovm  and  the  Spanish  colonies  were  concerned. 
The  exclusive  privileges  granted  to  the  Royal  African  Com- 
pany having  expired,  in  the  year  1750  the  British  Govern- 
ment undertook  to  maintain  the  forts  and  factories  on  the 
African  coast  at  its  ovtl  expense,  and  the  slave  trade  vras 
thrown  open  to  free  competition  on  the  part  of  its  citizens. 
A  great  increase  of  the  trade  now  took  place,  and  England 
had  become  the  leading  nation  in  that  trade,  which  was 
carried  on  chiefly  from  the  ports  of  Bristol  and  LiA^rpool, 
but  otlier  ports  including  that  of  London  shared  in  it — the 
TVest  Indies  furnishing  the  principal  market,  but  a  con- 
siderable number  were  also  introduced  into  the  colonies  of 
North  America. 

In  the  meantime  the  Puritan  settlers  in  New  England, 
under  the  allurements  of  the  high  profits  of  the  trade,  had 
been  tempted  to  engage  in  it  from  the  time  of  the  earliest 
settlements  there,  which  they  did  by  evading  the  monopolies 
and  restrictions  in  favor  of  English  merchants,  and  as  Xew 
England  rum  was  mainly  used  in  the  traffic,  by  the  Puritans, 
the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain  had,  at  the  instance  of 
English  merchants,  passed  an  act,  called  the  ''^Molasses 


14 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


Act"  imposing  duties  on  molasses,  sugar  and  rum  imported 
into  the  colonies  from  the  French  and  Dutch  West  Indies, 
for  the  purpose  of  preventing  interference  with  the  English 
trade  in  slaves. 

Numerous  acts  of  the  colonial  legislatures  imposing  duties 
on  the  importation  of  slaves,  had  also  been  vetoed  or  re- 
pealed by  royal  proclamation,  because  they  were  regarded 
and  styled  impediments  to  British  commerce  not  to  be 
favoured, ' '  and  all  such  acts  continued  to  be  vetoed  and  re- 
pealed down  to  the  time  of  the  American  Revolution,  except 
in  the  solitary  case  of  Virginia,  when,  after  repeated  acts 
imposing  such  duties  had  been  vetoed  or  repealed,  privilege 
was  finally  given  to  the  colonial  legislature  in  1734,  to  im- 
pose a  duty  to  be  paid  by  the  colonial  purchaser  and  not 
the  English  seller. 

But  it  was  not  by  fostering  the  slave  trade  and  prosecut- 
ing any  restrictions  on  it,  only,  that  the  British  govern- 
ment made  itself  responsible  for  African  slavery  in  its 
American  colonies.  In  the  year  1730  seven  of  the  principal 
Cherokee  Chiefs  from  the  unsettled  country  west  of  South 
Carolina,  were  carried  to  England  by  Sir  Alexander  Cum- 
ming,  and  while  there  they  were  induced  to  enter  into  a 
treaty  with  the  Board  of  Trade  then  having  charge  of 
colonial  affairs,  by  which  provision  was  made  for  the  return 
to  their  owners,  by  the  Indians,  of  all  runaway  slaves ;  and 
in  the  year  1732,  an  act  of  parliament  was  passed  ''for  the 
more  speedy  recovery  of  debts  in  America"  by  English 
creditors,  among  the  provisions  of  which  was  one  subjecting 
slaves  to  execution  in  judgments  for  all  demands.  While 
England  thus  became  so  identified  with  the  introduction  of 
African  slavery  into  America,  all  the  commercial  nations 
of  Europe  were  likewise  implicated  in  the  trade;  andjif 
England  took  the  lead  in,  it,  that  fact  was  owing  to  the 
superior  intelligence  and  energy  of  her  merchants  and 


/ 

THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH  15 

traders,  and  not  to_any  qualnis_of  conscience  on  the  part 
of  other  nations. 

In  fact  during  the  16th,  17th  and  18th  centuries,  until 
towards  the  close  of  the  latter,  when  a  very  few  "philan- 
thropists" appeared,  there  was  no  sentiment  in  any  Chris- 
tian or  unchristian  country  which  regarded  the  reduction 
of  the  negroes  of  Africa  to  slavery  as  opposed  to  moral 
right  or  religious  duty,  or  in  any  other  light  than  as  a 
blessing  to  the  negroes  themselves  and  Bt  great  benefit  to 
their  owners. 

It  is  a  fact,  not  undeserving  of  notice,  in  reviewing  the 
conduct  of  England  in  forcing  African  slaves  upon  her 
American  colonies,  that  during  the  whole  period  from  the 
settlement  to  the  revolt  of  those  colonies,  all  trade  with 
them  to  and  from  Ireland  was  absolutely  forbidden,  and 
hence  it  is  that  the  Irish  formed  so  inconsiderable  an  ele- 
ment in  their  population  previous  to  the  Revolution.  The 
native  Irish  were  then  regarded  by  their  rulers  as  having 
but  few  more  rights  than  the  negroes  of  Africa. 

Having  thus  briefly  shown  the  origin  and  progress  of  the 
slave  trade,  I  will  now  trace  the  settlement  of  the  colonies, 
which  afterwards  became  the  United  States,  and  the  intro- 
duction of  slavery  into  them. 


CHAPTEE  II 


The  first  permanent  settlement  within  the  limits  of  the 
United  States — as  they  became  afterwards — to  be  estab- 
lished, was  that  of  Florida,  which  was  begun  by  the  Span- 
iards in  the  year  1564.  Slavery  was  introduced  into 
Florida,  as  it  was  into  all  the  Spanish  colonies,  and  that 
colony  remained  under  the  control  of  Spain  until  the  year 
1763,  when  it  was  ceded  to  Great  Britain,  at  the  close  of 
the  war  which  resulted  in  the  cession  of  Canada,  and  the 
territory  east  of  the  Mississippi  by  France  to  the  same 
power,  but  in  1783,  after  the  recognition  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  United  States,  Florida  along  with  that  part 
of  Louisiana  east  of  the  Mississippi  and  south  of  the  31st 
degree  of  latitude,  which  had  been  ceded  by  France,  was  re- 
ceded to  Spain,  and  remained  a  Spanish  colony  until  the 
year  1821,  when  it  was  ceded  to  the  United  States ;  slavery 
continuing  to  exist  there  under  all  these  changes. 

The  next  permanent  settlement  in  point  of  time,  was  that 
of  Virginia  by  the  English  in  the  year  1607.  In  the  year 
1620,  twenty  negro  slaves  were  brought  to  Jamestown  in 
Virginia  by  a  Dutch  man-of-war  and  sold  to  the  colonists, 
but  the  number  of  slaves  in  that  colony  remained  so  small 
for  a  long  time,  that  there  was  no  legislative  enactment 
recognizing  the  existence  of  slavery  for  more  than  forty 
years  after  the  first  introduction  of  it. 

The  reduction  of  Indians  to  slavery  was  prohibited  in 
Virginia  from  the  beginning,  and  in  the  year  1658  by  the 
revised  laws  adopted  in  that  colony,  the  Indians  were  pro- 
tected in  the  possession  of  their  lands,  and  in  order  to 
secure  the  Indian  children,  placed  with  the  colonists  for 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


17 


education,  from  being  sold  as  slaves,  the  transfer  of  their 
service  was  forbidden.  In  the  revised  code  adopted  in 
1662,  very  humane  provisions  were  contained  for  the  pro- 
tection of  the  Indians,  in  the  enjoyment  of  their  lands,  and 
it  was  enacted  that  no  Indians  entertained  as  servants 
should  be  sold  into  slavery  for  a  longer  period  than  English 
indented  servants  of  like  age.  In  the  same  year,  the  first 
act  was  passed  by  the  colonial  legislature  recognizing  the 
existence  of  slavery,  and  it  was  to  the  effect  that  children 
should  be  held  as  bond  or  free  "according  to  the  condition 
of  the  mothers." 

This  law  recognized  the  generally  received  principle  that 
slavery  was  valid  according  to  the  laws  of  nations,  but  did 
not  itself  enact  slavery.  That  principle  prevailed  uni- 
versally, all  over  the  world  at  that  time,  and  had  prevailed 
since  the  foundation,  being  recognized  in  the  bible. 

In  the  year  1667,  a  law  was  passed  providing  that  negro 
slaves  converted  and  baptized  should  not  thereby  become 
free.  The  motive  for  the  adoption  of  this  law,  was  to  secure 
to  slaves  religious  instruction,  as  an  idea  prevailed  among 
some  that  it  was  not  lawful  to  hold  a  Christian  in  slavery, 
and  it  was  apprehended  that  masters  might  be  indisposed, 
under  such  impressions,  to  encourage  their  slaves  to  become 
converted.  In  the  same  year  it  was  provided  by  law  that 
''all  servants,  not  being  Christians,  imported  by  shipping 
shall  be  slaves  for  life." 

In  1671,  there  were  in  Virginia,  according  to  a  statement 
furnished  by  Governor  Berkeley,  40,000  inhabitants,  includ- 
ing in  that  number  2.000  "black  slaves"  and  6,000  Chris- 
tian servants.  The  latter  consisted  of  English  servants 
brought  into  the  colony  as  indented  servants  for  a  term  of 
years,  and  sold — as  was  the  practice  in  all  of  the  colonies 
at  that  day — to  pay  the  expenses  of  their  passage. 


18 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


During  what  was  known  as  Bacon's  rebellion  in  1676, 
the  Virginia  Assembly,  acting  under  the  coercion  of  Bacon 's 
followers,  passed  an  act  for  the  prosecution  of  a  war 
against  the  Indians,  and  one  of  its  provisions  was  that 
all  Indians  taken  prisoners  in  war  should  be  held  and  ac- 
coujQted  slaves  for  life.  This  was  the  first  and  only  pro- 
vision of  the  laws  of  that  colony  authorizing  the  reduction 
of  Indians  to  slavery,  though  Indian  slaves,  not  being 
Christians,  brought  in  by  shipping  might  be  held,  under 
the  law  of  1667;  but  there  were  no  slaves  made  under  this 
forced  enactment  of  Bacon 's,  as  the  war  was  not  prosecuted, 
the  rebellion  having  come  to  an  end,  by  the  death  of  its 
leader,  the  same  year. 

A  law  was  enacted  in  the  year  1682,  by  which  negroes,  ' 
Moors,  mulattoes  or  Indians,  brought  into,  the  colony  as 
servants,  by  sea  or  land,  were  recognized  as  slaves  '  ^  whether 
converted  to  Christianity  or  not,  provided  they  were  not  of 
Christian  parentage  or  country,  or  Turks  or  Moors  in  amity 
with  his  majesty." 

In  the  year  1692,  an  act  was  passed  providing  for  ''a  free 
and  open  trade  for  all  persons,  at  all  times  and  at  all  places 
with  all  Indians  whatsoever,"  under  which  the  Virginia 
courts  decided  that  no  Indian  could  be  reduced  to  slavery, 
or  brought  into  Virginia  as  a  slave,  after  the  passage  of  the 
act. 

In  the  revised  Code  of  Virginia,  adopted  in  the  year 
1705,  is  contained  the  final  enactment  upon  the  subject  of 
slavery  during  the  colonial  state,  except  some  acts  impos- 
ing duties  on  imported  slaves,  and  by  that  enactment  it 
was  provided  that  ''all  servants  imported  or  brought  into 
this  country  by  sea  or  land,  who  were  not  Christians  in 
their  native  country  (except  Turks  and  Moors  in  amity 
with  his  majesty,  and  others  who  can  make  due  proof  of 
their  being  free  in  England  or  any  other  Christian  country 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


19 


before  tliey  ^^-ere  shipped  in  order  to  transportation  tliitlier  j 
shall  be  aecijiinted  and  be  slaves,  notwithstanding  a  con- 
version to  Christianity  afterwards :  and  it  was  further  pro- 
vided— as  in  the  hrst  act  on  the  subject — for  "'all  children 
to  be  bond  or  free  according  to  the  condition  of  their 
mothers. ' ' 

The  Virginia  Assembly  had  passed,  from  time  to  time, 
acts  imposing  a  duty  of  twenty  shillings  a  head  on  all  im- 
ported slaves,  and  this  being  renewed  in  1723.  was  repealed 
by  royal  proclamation,  but  the  Board  of  Trade  in  England 
intimated  that  they  had  no  objection  to  a  duty  on  import-d 
negroes,  provided  it  was  exacted  from  the  colonial  pur- 
chaser, and  not  from  the  English  seller :  and  in  1734  an  act 
was  passed  imposing  a  duty  of  five  per  cent,  to  be  paid  by 
the  purchaser,  viiicli  was  su]\sequently  increased  and 
reached  as  high  as  twenty  per  cent. 

In  the  year  1772.  the  House  of  Burgesses  of  Virginia 
adopted  an  address  to  George  III.  declaring  the  importa- 
tion of  negroes  from  Africa  to  be  an  inhuman  trade  and 
asking  that  all  restraints  be  removed  from  the  passage  of 
acts  to  check  ""that  pernicious  commerce,  which  request 
was  not  granted. 

After  the  commencement  of  the  difficulties  which  led  to 
the  Eevolution.  the  Virginia  convention,  which  assembled 
the  1st  of  August.  177-1.  and  took  upon  itself  the  actual 
management  of  the  ah'airs  of  the  colony,  ad'jpted  among 
its  first  acts,  a  resolution  tC'  import  ""no  more  slaves,  nor 
British  goods,  nor  tea,""  Practically  this  resolution  put 
an  end  rorevr^r  to  The  African  slave  trade  so  far  as  Virgima 
was  concerned,  and  its  abolition  was  subse^niently  con- 
firmed during  th^  war  of  the  Eevolution  by  a  move  f'jrmal 
act  pa.^sed  by  the  legislatune  in  the  year  177S.  prohibit- 
ing the  impc'rtation  of  slaves  from  any  cpuarter.  whether  hy 
sea  or  land,  and  providing  that  all  brought  into  the  State 


20 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


in  violation  of  the  law  should  be  free.  Slaves  brought  in 
by  citizens  of  other  of  the  United  States  coming  into  Vir- 
ginia as  actual  residents,  and  those  inherited  by  citizens  of 
Virginia  in  other  States  of  the  Union  and  brought  in  by 
them  being  exempted  from  the  operation  of  the  act.  In 
addition  to  the  grant  of  freedom  to  the  slaves  themselves 
heavy  penalties  were  imposed  on  both  the  buyer  and  seller 
who  violated  the  act.  In  adopting  this  prohibition,  Virginia 
was  ahead  of  all  the  States  in  the  Union  except  the  little 
State  of  Delaware,  and  its  action  preceded  the  abolition  of 
the  slave  trade,  by  England,  thirty  years. 

The  citizens  of  Virginia  had  never  engaged  in  the  slave 
trade  as  importers,  and  were  merely  the  purchasers  from 
others — its  legislature  being  prohibited  from  interfering 
with  the  trade. 

About  the  year  1610,  trading  posts  were  established  by 
^  the  Dutch  within  the  present  limits  of  New  York,  and  the 
name  of  New  Netherland  was  given  to  the  territory  claimed, 
including  that  of  New  York,  New  Jersey,  or  the  J ersey,  and 
some  other.  Actual  colonization  began  within  the  present 
limits  of  New  York,  under  the  authority  of  the  Dutch 
government  in  the  year  1629,  the  traders  located  in  those 
limits  having  been  previously  engaged  only  in  trade  with 
the  Indians.  Slavery  was  introduced  with  the  first  settlers 
and  was  recognized  and  protected  by  law.  In  the  year  1664, 
New  Netherland  was  conquered  from  its  Dutch  rulers,  by 
an  English  expedition  under  the  authority  of  the  Duke  of 
York,  subsequently  James  II,  to  whom  a  royal  grant  of 
the  territory  had  been  made.  The  province  of  New  York 
was  then  created  out  of  New  Netherland,  though  it  came 
again,  temporarily,  under  the  Dutch  for  portions  of  the 
years  1673  and  1674. 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


21 


Slavery  was  continued  as  it  before  existed  until  after  the 
Revolution.  Vessels  were  fitted  out  in  the  port  of  New 
York  (first  called  New  Amsterdam),  for  the  slave  trade  at 
an  early  period,  and  the  merchants  of  that  city  engaged  in 
it  without  scruple ;  some  of  them  continued  to  be  so  engaged 
until  the  traffic  was  prohibited  by  Congressional  enactment. 

The  settlement  next  in  point  of  time  w^as  that  of  Ply- 
mouth, in  the  year  1620,  within  the  present  limits  of  the 
State  of  Massachusetts.  Slavery  of  the  Indians  and  also 
of  negroes  existed  in  this  province  from  the  beginning.  The 
settlement  at  Plj^mouth  by  the  passengers  of  the  May 
Flower,  though  first  in  point  of  time,  was  not  by  any  means, 
the  leading  one  in  Massachusetts,  and  the  Province  of  Ply- 
mouth played  comparatively  an  unimportant  part  in  the 
history  of  Massachusetts.  The  main  settlement  in  that 
colony  was  made  in  the  year  1629,  by  John  Winthrop  and 
his  followers,  Puritans  emigrating  directly^  from  England, 
professedly  for  the  purpose  of  securing  to  themselves,  and 
their  posterity,  religious  freedom.  It  was  this  settlement 
which  gave  tone  and  character  to  Massachusetts,  as  well  as 
to  all  the  other  New  England  provinces,  which  were  chiefly 
offshoots  from  Massachusetts. 

Though  professing  to  be  seeking  a  home  in  this  wilder- 
ness for  the  purpose  of  enjoying  and  establishing  religious 
liberty,  the  settlers  of  Massachusetts  established  as  prescrip- 
tive and  despotic  a  theocracy  as  the  world  has  ever  seen.  A 
celebrated  humorist  has  aptly  said  that  their  idea  of  re- 
ligious liberty  consisted  in  enjoying  their  own  opinions  to 
the  fullest  extent  and  preventing  any  body  else  from  enjoy- 
ing theirs. 

Under  their  charter  a  government  was  established  by  the 
colonists  at  Massachusetts  Bay,  which  was  entirely  theo- 
cratic in  form  and  substance.    To  be  a  freeman,  that  is  a 


22 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


citizen  and  voter,  it  was  necessary  to  be  a  member  of  the 
established  church,  which  was  the  Congregational,  and  was 
supported  at  the  public  expense.  The  members  of  that 
church  claimed  to  be  God 's  elect,  and  they  showed  no  mercy 
to  any  other  sect  and  allowed  of  no  dissent  whatever;  all 
others  were  heretics  or  heathens. 

From  the  beginning,  the  colonists  at  Massachusetts  Bay, 
as  well  as  those  at  Plymouth,  regarded  the  ' '  heathen  around 
them''  and  all  their  possessions  as  fit  spoil  for  the  ''Saints.'' 
Accordingly  they  began  at  a  very  early  period  to  help  them- 
selves. In  the  year  1637,  in  a  war  begun  against  the 
Piquods,  that  tribe  of  Indians  was  exterminated  by 
slaughter  and  capture.  Of  several  hundred  prisoners  taken, 
the  adult  males,  constituting  but  a  small  portion  of  the 
captives,  were  sent  to  the  West  Indies  and  sold  into  slavery, 
while  the  women  and  children  were  distributed  among  the 
colonists  as  slaves  also;  this  was  done  by  the  constituted 
authorities. 

These  colonists  commenced  the  building  of  ships  in  the 
year  1634,  and  engaged  in  commerce,  the  African  slave 
trade,  being,  from  the  beginning,  a  part  of  that  commerce. 
By  the  year  1640,  six  large  vessels  had  been  built,  and 
fitted  out  by  the  Boston  merchants,  which  were  sent  on 
voyages  to  Spain,  Madeira  and  the  Canaries  with  cargoes 
of  fi^h  and  staves,  and  brought  back,  among  other  things, 
cargoes  of  negroes  from  the  coast  of  Africa  for  sale  at 
Barbadoes  and  the  other  British  West  India  Islands. 

It  was  not  a  great  while  before  the  religious  persecution 
in  Massachusetts  drove  off  a  number  of  dissenters  from  the 
established  faith,  among  them  being  the  celebrated  Roger 
Williams,  the  founder  of  the  Baptists  in  America.  These 
"heretics,"  as  they  were  called,  took  refuge  within  the 
present  limits  of  Rhode  Island,  where  they  established,  at 
different  points,  separate  governments  for  themselves,  all  of 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


23 


which  were  subsequently  merged  in  that  of  Rhode  Island. 
Emigrants  from  Massachusetts  also  established  themselves 
at  different  points  in  the  present  limits  of  Connecticut  and 
formed  two  separate  governments,  one  called  New  Haven 
and  the  other  Connecticut,  which  were  afterwards  united 
under  that  of  Connecticut.  Massachusetts  set  up  a  claim 
of  jurisdiction  over  all  of  these  settlements,  but  finally  had 
to  abandon  it. 

In  the  year  1641,  the  general  court  of  Massachusetts,  in 
which  the  legislative  power  was  vested,  adopted  a  code  of 
fundamental  laws  called  "Fundamentals"  or  "Body  of 
Liberties."  which  were  compiled  from  two  separate  drafts 
reported  by  those  "Godly  ministers,"  "the  great  Cotton" 
as  he  was  called,  and  Xathaniel  Ward,  who  had  been  ap- 
pointed commissioners  for  that  purpose.  One  of  the  "Lib- 
erties" provided  that  "There  shaU  never  be  any  bond- 
slavery,  villanage  nor  captivity  among  lis, ^unless  it  be  law- 
ful captives  taken  in  just  wars,  and  such  strangers  as  will- 
ingly sell  themselves  or  are  sold  unto  us,  and  these  shall 
have  all  the  liberties  and  Christian  usages  which  the  law 
of  God,  established  in  Israel,  requires.  This  exempts  none 
from  servitude  who  shall  be  judged  thereto  by  authority." 
This  surely  was  a  one-sided  idea  of  religious  liberty;  the 
"elect"  gave  themselves  abundant  liberty  to  do  as  they 
pleased  in  the  matter.  This  "Fundamental"  was  twenty 
years  in  advance  of  any  legislative  enactment  in  Virginia 
recognizing  the  existence  of  slavery. 

A  confederacy  was  formed,  in  the  year  1643,  between  the 
colonies  of  Massachusetts.  Plymouth,  Connecticut  and  New 
Haven,  called  the  "United  Colonies  of  New  England"  into 
which  the  "heretics"  of  Rhode  Island  were  not  permitted 
to  enter.  Slavery  existed  by  law  everj^here  now  in  New 
England,  including  Rhode  Island,  and  one  of  the  stipula- 
tions of  the  compact,  by  which  the  United  Colonies  were 


24 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


bound,  was  that  fugitive  servants  or  slaves  should  be  de- 
livered up  when  fleeing  from  one  province  to  another.  The 
stipulation  was  almost  in  the  identical  terms  of  that  long 
afterwards  incorporated  into  the  United  States  Constitution 
upon  the  same  subject. 

The  harsh  treatment  pursued  towards  dissenters,  includ- 
ing the  most  delicate  females,  who  were  sometimes  stripped 
naked  and  whipped  through  the  streets,  and  the  trials  and 
execution  of  persons  as  witches,  furnish  revolting  details 
of  the  conduct  of  the  ' '  elect, ' '  but  it  is  not  intended  to  refer 
more  particularly  to  that  here.  One  fact,  however,  in 
regard  to  the  history  of  Virginia  and  Massachusetts  may  be 
properly  mentioned — as  descendants  of  the  latter 's  colonists 
have  arraigned  at  the  bar  of  public  opinion,  the  people  of 
Virginia,  as  well  as  the  whole  South  upon  the  subject  of 
slavery — and  that  fact  is  very  suggestive. 

In  the  year  1644,  the  Indians  in  Virginia,  under  the 
instigation  of  Opechancanough,  successor  of  Powhatan, 
undertook  to  exterminate  the  colonists  in  that  province, 
when  five  hundred  persons,  who  were  engaged  in  celebrat- 
ing a  victory  of  the  king  over  the  Parliamentary  army  in 
the  war  then  raging,  were  massacred  at  the  first  surprise. 
A  ship  was  sent  to  Boston  to  procure  powder  for  the  de- 
fence of  the  colony,  but  the  general  court  declined  to 
furnish  it.  This  refusal  was  owing  to  the  fact  that  the 
people  of  Virginia  sympathized  with  the  king  in  the  pend- 
ing struggle,  and  to  the  further  fact  that  three  ministers 
sent  out  from  New  England  at  the  instance  of  some  of  the 
' '  elect, ' '  who  had  found  their  way  into  Virginia,  were  sent 
out  of  the  province  by  Governor  Berkeley  for  violating  the 
law — Governor  Winthrop  declaring  that  the  massacre  of  the 
Virginians  was  a  punishment  ' '  for  their  reviling  the  Gospel 
and  those  faithful  ministers." 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


25 


A  law  was  adopted  in  Connecticut,  1650,  for  selling 
debtors  for  debt,  which  remained  in  force  more  than  a 
century  and  a  half;  and  at  the  same  time  a  law  was 
adopted,  upon  the  recommendation  of  the  commissioners 
for  the  United  Colonies  of  New  England,  providing  that 
Indians  refusing  or  neglecting  satisfaction  for  injuries 
might  be  siezed  and  delivered  to  the  party  injured  "either 
to  serve,  or  to  be  shipped  out  and  exchanged  for  negroes, 
as  the  case  will  justly  bear."  About  this  time,  the  "her- 
etics" at  Warwick,  one  of  the  settlements  in  Ehode  Island, 
complained  that  the  authorities  of  Massachusetts  had  insti- 
gated the  Indians  to  commit  depredations  upon  them,  and 
Easton,  subsequently  governor  of  Ehode  Island,  was  re- 
ported to  have  said  of  the  people  of  Massachusetts,  that 
"the  elect  had  the  Holy  Ghost  and  the  devil  indwelling." 
Upon  hearing  of  the  execution  of  two  persons  for  witch- 
craft, the  people  of  Warwick  exclaimed  "There  are  no 
witches  on  earth,  nor  devils,  but  the  ministers  of  New  Eng- 
land and  such  as  they. ' ' 

In  1676,  a  large  number  of  captives,  taken  in  the  war 
against  King  Philip,  in  which  all  of  New  England  was 
united,  were  made  slaves  of,  many  of  them  were  sent  from 
Boston  to  Bermuda  and  sold,  including  the  infant  son  of 
King  Philip,  who,  some  of  the  most  prominent  ministers  in- 
sisted, should  be  slain  for  his  father's  sins,  though  the  more 
remunerative  expedient  of  selling  him  was  adopted.  The 
captives  who  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Rhode  Islanders  were 
distributed  as  slaves,  and  Roger  Williams,  the  expelled 
"heretic"  from  Massachusetts,  received  a  boy  for  his  share. 
A  large  body  of  Indians  assembled  at  Dover,  at  the  conclu- 
sion of  the  war,  to  make  peace ,  were  treacherously  captured 
and  some  tv>^o  hundred  of  them  were  sent  to  Boston,  where 
some  vrere  hung  and  the  rest  shipped  off  to  be  sold  as  slaves. 


26 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


In  the  reign  of  James  II,  the  charter  of  Massachusetts 
was  vacated  by  legal  proceedings,  and  in  the  year  1691,  a 
new  charter  was  issued  providing  for  the  appointment  of 
the  governor  by  the  crown  and  for  toleration  to  all  religious 
sects.  This  gave  great  dissatisfaction  to  the  ruling  church ; 
and  the  theocratic  power  was  in  a  great  measure  destroyed, 
but  the  controlling  influence  of  the  old  religious  party  still 
prevailed  in  the  general  court,  though  restrained  by  the 
royal  governor.  By  this  charter  the  province  of  Plymouth 
was  incorporated  with  that  of  Massachusetts,  as  was  the 
district  of  Maine,  but  New  Hampshire,  previously  under 
the  government  of  Massachusetts,  was  soon  created  into  a 
separate  province. 

In  1701,  the  town  of  Boston  instructed  its  representatives 
to  propose  "putting  a  period  to  negroes  being  slaves,"  but 
no  action  was  taken,  and  these  scruples  were  very  short 
lived,  the  enslaving  of  Indians  and  the  prosecution  of  the 
slave  trade  being  still  continued.  The  manufacture  of  New 
England  rum,  which  was  in  progress,  furnished  a  very  easy 
means  of  prosecuting  the  trade,  as  that  article  was  freely 
exchanged  on  the  coast  of  Africa  with  the  natives  for  slaves. 
One  part  of  the  inhabitants  being  imbruited  by  the  detest- 
able liquor,  while  the  other  was  carried  off  into  bondage. 
The  traders  of  New  England,  composed  of  all  classes,  in- 
cluding church  dignitaries,  participated  largely  in  the 
profits  resulting  from  the  impulse  given  to  the  slave  trade 
in  1698,  and  it  was  sustained  by  public  sentiment  in  those 
colonies  as  well  as  in  the  mother  country. 

In  1704,  in  the  intercolonial  war  with  Canada,  Massa- 
chusetts offered  a  reward  of  $66  per  head  for  Indian  pris- 
oners under  ten  years  of  age  and  double  as  much  for  older 
prisoners  or  for  scalps. 

In  1712,  Massachusetts  passed  an  act  prohibiting  the 
further  importation  of  Indian  slaves  on  pain  of  the  forfei- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


27 


ture  of  the  slaves,  but  this  prohibition  did  not  arise  from 
feelings  of  humanity  for  the  Indians ;  the  reasons  given  for 
it  were,  that  the  Indians  were  "of  a  surly  and  revengeful 
spirit,  rude  and  insolent  in  their  behavior,  and  very  un- 
governable" and  because  ''this  province  being  differently 
circumstanced  from  the  plantations  in  the  islands,  and  hav- 
ing great  numbers  of  the  Indian  natives  of  the  country 
within  and  about  them  and  at  this  time  under  the  sorrowful 
effects  of  their  rebellion  and  hostilities." 

The  merchants  of  England  having  complained  that  the 
New  Englanders  were  infringing  upon  their  rights  by  en- 
gaging in  the  slave  trade,  which  the  New  England  traders 
now  mainly  carried  on  with  rum,  for  the  manufacture  of 
which  molasses  was  imported  from  elsewhere  than  the 
British  West  India  Islands,  an  act  of  Parliament  was  passed 
in  1733,  imposing  a  duty  on  molasses,  sugar  and  rum  im- 
ported from  the  French  and  Dutch  West  Indies.  This  act 
was  called  the  "Molasses  Act,"  and  was  the  first  of  the 
series  of  Acts  bringing  about  the  discontent  which  led  to 
the  Revolution.  The  traders  of  New  England  man- 
aged to  elude  this  act  as  they  had  done  the  restrictions  put 
upon  the  slave  trade  for  the  benefit  of  the  English  mer- 
chants. The  manufacture  of  rum  and  the  trade  from  all 
the  ports  of  New  England  still  continued  with  great  activity 
up  to  the  commencement  of  the  Eevolution,  and  served  to 
build  up  the  commerce  of  that  section,  as  the  same  trade 
had  built  up  the  commerce  of  the  mother  country. 

Some  slaves  were  imported  into  all  the  New  England 
colonies,  but  as  there  was  not  very  profitable  employment 
for  them  there,  and  it  was  vastly  more  remunerative  to  sell 
than  to  work  them,  the  former  was  preferred  to  the  latter 
mode  of  dealing  with  the  subject  and  in  it  they  found  a 
rich  reward.  The  markets  for  the  slaves  were  found  in  the 
West  Indies  and  in  the  Southern  colonies,  where  the  soil, 


28 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


climate  and  productions  were  miicli  more  suitable  for 
African  slave  labor,  than  in  the  cold  regions  of  the  north. 
There  were,  however,  in  the  year  1754,  2,448  negro  slaves  in 
Massachusetts  over  16  years  of  age,  1,000  of  them  being  in 
Boston,  and  the  whole  number  exceeded  4,000,  while  in 
Connecticut  and  Ehode  Island  the  proportion  of  slaves  to 
the  white  population  was  greater  than  in  Massachusetts. 

Maryland  was  settled  under  the  proprietorship  of  Lord 
Baltimore  in  the  year  1634,  and  slavery  was  introduced  into 
that  colony  also,  the  laws  recognizing  and  regulating  it 
being  very  similar  to  those  of  Virginia.  In  1649,  an  act 
was  passed  by  which  the  kidnapping  of  Indians'  to  make 
them  slaves,  was  made  felony,  and  in  1663,  the  first  act 
recognizing  slavery  was  passed,  being  similar  in  its  features 
to  that  of  Virginia.  The  people  of  Maryland  did  not  en- 
gage in  the  slave  trade  and  were  merely  purchasers. 

The  first  settlement  in  the  Carolinas  was  within  the 
limits  of  what  became  South  Carolina,  and  was  made  in  the 
latter  half  of  the  16th  century  by  French  Huguenots,  but 
that  settlement  proved  a  failure.  An  attempt  to  make  a 
settlement  in  North  Carolina  under  the  auspices  of  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh  also  proved  abortive.  The  first  permanent 
settlement  in  North  Carolina  was  by  Virginia  emigrants  to 
the  northern  part  of  it,  some  years  previous  to  the  charter, 
which  was  granted  to  some  English  noblemen  and  others  for 
both  of  the  Carolinas.  In  1665,  North  Carolina  was  taken 
possession  of  under  this  charter,  and  a  government  was  es- 
tablished therefor.  In  1670,  South  Carolina  was  perman- 
ently settled.  Though  embraced  in  the  same  charter.  North 
and  South  Carolina  now  became  separate  provinces  with 
distinct  governments.  Slavery  was  introduced  into  both 
provinces  and  was  recognized  by  law ;  the  number  of  slaves 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


29 


continuing  to  increase  as  the  population  increased  and  the 
capacities  of  the  soil  became  kno^^vn,  which  proved  to  be 
very  suitable  for  slave  labor.  There  was  nothing  special 
in  the  history  of  slavery  in  these  provinces  during  the 
colonial  state.  The  people  did  not  engage  in  the  slave 
trade,  but  were  merely  purchasers  from  English  and  New 
England  traders;  nor  did  they  make  slaves  of  the  Indians 
by  whom  they  were  surrounded. 

The  first  settlers  within  the  limits  of  New  Jersey  were 
Swedes,  who  came  over  prior  to  1630.  New  Jersey,  or  East 
and  West  Jersey  as  it  was  called  then,  wa^  settled  in  1665 
by  English  emigrants,  and  two  governments  were  organized 
therefor  under  grants  from  the  Duke  of  York,  which  were 
subsequently  consolidated  into  one.  Slavery  was  intro- 
duced into  that  province  as  it  had  been  in  all  of  the  others, 
but  the  number  of  slaves  did  not  become  as  numerous  as  in 
the  more  Southern  colonies,  because  the  soil  and  climate 
were  not  as  suitable  for  slave  labor. 

Pennsylvania  was  settled  in  1682  under  the  proprietor- 
ship of  "William  Penn,  and  the  government  was  organized 
by  him,  including  within  its  jurisdiction  Delaware  also. 
Slavery  was  introduced  into  this  colony,  and  slaves  were 
held  without  scruple  by  the  Quaker  followers  of  Penn.  In 
1692,  George  Keith,  a  Scotch  Quaker  who  had  been  the 
champion  of  the  Quakers  against  their  persecutors — the 
Reverend  Cotton  Mather  of  witch  notoriety,  and  the  other 
Massachusetts  divines — attacked  negro  slavery  as  incon- 
sistent with  Quaker  principles.  For  this  he  was  ^'disavowed'' 
by  the  yearly  meeting  of  the  Quakers  of  Pennsylvania,  as  a 
schismatic,  and  he  instituted  a  meeting  of  his  own  called 
''Christian  Quakers."  For  publishing  a  reply  to  a  publi- 
cation against  him,  he  was  fined  by  the  Quaker  magistrates 
of  Philadelphia  and  he  subsequently  became  disgusted 


30 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


with  the  whole  sect,  turned  Episcopalian,  went  to  England 
and  took  orders  there,  and  was  one  of  the  first  missionaries 
sent  to  the  American  colonies  by  the  ''Society  for  propo- 
gating  the  gospel  in  foreign  parts. ' ' 

In  1699,  Penn  proposed  to  provide  by  law  for  the  mar- 
riage, religious  instruction  and  kind  treatment  of  slaves, 
but  he  met  with  no  response  from  the  Quaker  legislature  of 
Pennsylvania.  The  ''spirit"  had  not  then  moved  the  Qua- 
kers to  "bear  their  testimony"  against  slavery  and  conse- 
quently they  did  not  "testify."  In  1712,  the  legislature 
imposed  a  duty  of  £20  on  all  negroes  and  Indians  brought 
into  the  province  by  land  or  water,  a  drawback  to  be 
allowed  in  case  of  re-exportation  within  twenty  days,  and 
slaves  brought  in  and  concealed  were  to  be  sold.  This  act 
did  not  owe  its  origin  to  abhorrence  of  slavery  itself,  but 
was  passed  in  a  fright  at  some  alleged  plots  for  insurrec- 
tions, which  were  apprehended  in  consequence  of  one  which 
had  been  discovered  in  New  York.  The  act  was  disallowed 
by  Queen  Anne,  and  the  same  legislature  replied  to  a  peti- 
tion in  favor  of  emancipating  the  negroes,  "That  it  was 
neither  just  nor  expedient  to  set  them  at  liberty."  This 
was  the  only  "testimony"  borne  by  the  Quakers  of  Penn- 
sylvania against  slavery  prior  to  the  war  of  the  Revolution. 

Delaware  was  originally  settled  by  Swedes  at  the  same 
time  the  settlement  was  made  in  New  Jersey,  and  it  had 
been  embraced  under  the  same  government  with  Pennsyl- 
vania at  the  time  of  Penn's  settlement,  but  it  was  made  a 
separate  province,  by  his  consent,  in  the  year  1691.  Dela- 
ware is  entitled  to  the  credit  of  being  not  only  the  first  of 
the  provinces  but  the  first  country  in  the  world  to  adopt  an 
express  enactment  prohibiting  the  introduction  of  slaves 
within  its  limits.  This  it  did  in  the  year  1771,  but  the  act 
was  vetoed  by  Governor  Penn,  the  grandson  of  Wm.  Penn, 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


31 


and  the  representative  of  the  crown.  The  prohibition  was 
incorporated  into  the  first  State  Constitution  adopted  in 
the  year  1776.  Delaware  was,  howeA'er.  a  slave  colony  and 
remained  a  slave  State. 

The  first  permanent  settlement  within  the  limits  of  the 
territory  of  Louisiana,  which  embraced  a  very  large  tract 
of  country,  was  made  under  the  auspices  of  D'lbber^uUe, 
a  French  Canadian,  at  Mobile,  within  the  limits  of  the 
present  State  of  Alabama  in  the  year  1702.  Bienville, 
governor  of  Louisiana,  located  Xew  Orleans,  the  first  perma- 
nent settlement  within  the  limits  of  the  State  of  Louisiana, 
in  the  year  1718.  Slavery  was  introduced  into  the  province 
of  Louisiana  under  the  direction  of  the  French  government, 
a  contract  being  made  for  that  purpose  with  Anthony 
Crozat.  a  French  merchant,  to  whom  the  province  and  a 
monopoly  of  its  trade  were  granted.  Crozat  resigned  his 
patent  in  1717.  and  a  monopoly  of  the  trade  for  twenty- 
five  years  was  granted  to  "the  company  of  the  "West."'  com- 
monly called  ' '  The  ]\Iississippi  Company, ' '  ^vith  which  the 
famous  Law  was  connected.  By  its  contract,  the  company 
undertook  to  introduce  6.000  whites  and  half  as  many  negro 
slaves  into  the  province.  Slavery  thus  became  established 
in  Louisiana  under  the  express  stipulation  of  the  French 
government,  and  continued  to  exist  under  its  authority.  In 
1763.  by  the  treaty  made  between  England.  France  and 
Spain,  at  the  close  of  the  war  in  which  all  three  nations  had 
been  engagecL  France  ceded  to  England.  Canada  and  all  of 
the  territory  east  of  the  ^Mississippi  river,  except  the  island 
of  Orleans,  and  to  Spain  all  of  Louisiana  which  had  not 
been  ceded  to  England,  while  Spain  ceded  Florida  to  Eng- 
land. In  1783,  England  re-ceded  Florida  to  Spain,  and  at 
the  same  time  ceded  to  the  same  power  that  part  of  Louisi- 
ana north  of  the  31st  degree  of  latitude  which  had  been 


32 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


acquired  from  France.  The  parts  of  the  original  province 
of  Louisiana  thus  re-united,  remained  a  Spanish  province 
until  the  year  1801,  when  it  was  re-ceded  to  France,  and 
in  1803  it  was  ceded  to  the  United  States.  Slavery  had 
continued  to  exist  in  the  province,  and  the  different  parts 
of  it,  and  to  be  recognized  as  legal,  during  all  of  these 
changes. 

In  1733,  Georgia  was  settled  under  the  patronage  of  Gen- 
eral Oglethorpe,  of  the  British  Army,  and  it  was  intended 
as  a  humanitarian  scheme  for  furnishing  refuge  to  impov- 
erished meritorious  persons,  and  persecuted  Continental 
Protestants.  The  territory,  together  with  the  power  to 
legislate  for  twenty-one  years,  was  granted  to  trustees  resi- 
dent in  England.  The  trustees  at  first  prohibited  the  intro- 
duction of  slaves,  but  under  the  humanitarian  ideas  with 
which  the  colony  was  begun,  it  languished  and  proved  a 
miserable  failure  until  the  year  1749.  The  trustees  were 
then  induced  to  permit  the  introduction  of  slaves,  at  the 
instance,  among  others,  of  the  celebrated  preacher,  Whit- 
field, and  his  follower,  Habersham,  who  earnestly  interceded 
for  the  permission — Habersham  stating  as  a  reason  for  the 
introduction  of  slavery  that  ''Many  of  the  poor  slaves  in 
America  have  already  been  made  freemen  of  the  Heavenly 
Jerusalem. ' ' 

Slavery  was  thus  introduced  into  Georgia,  and  the  Colony 
began  at  once  to  prosper  and  advanced  with  rapid  strides. 

The  institution  of  slavery,  it  will  thus  be  perceived, 
existed  at  the  time  of  the  Eevolution,  not  only  in  all  of  the 
revolting  colonies,  aclmowledged  by  law  and  sustained  by 
public  sentiment  at  home  and  in  the  mother  country,  but 
it  existed  in  all  of  the  territories,  which  afterwards  became 
a  part  of  the  United  States,  and  was  sanctioned  by  the  senti- 
ment of  all  of  the  Christian  world. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


33 


But  before  this  review  of  the  slave  trade  and  of  slavery 
in  the  British  colonies  in  North  America,  is  closed,  it  is 
proper  that  England  should  receive  credit  for  one  incident 
in  her  judicial  history  in  regard  to  tlje  subject.  In  the  year 
1763,  the  celebrated  case  of  Somerset,  a  slave  who  had  been 
carried  to  England  by  his  master  from  one  of  the  British 
West  India  Islands,  came  up  before  Lord  ]\Iansfield  in 
Westminster  Hall  on  a  writ  of  lialeas  corpus,  and  that  dis- 
tinguished Chief  Justice  of  the  King's  Bench,  in  delivering 
his  opinion  discharging  the  petition,  said :  ' '  The  air  of  Eng- 
land has  long  been  too  pure  for  a  slave,  and  every  man  who 
breathes  it  is  free. ' ' 

This  declaration  is  the  source  of  much  pride  to  English- 
men and  Lord  Campbell  in  his  "Lives  of  the  Chief  Jus- 
tices" goes  into  ecstasies  over  it.  It  is  regarded  as  the 
enunciation  of  the  great  principle  that  the  common  law  of 
England  establishes  universal  freedom,  and  that  wherever 
it  prevails  it  knocks  the  shackles  from  the  slave  and  turns 
him  loose,  a  free  man.  Yet  it  was  most  probable  that  Somer- 
set himself,  and  it  was  certain  that  his  ancestor,  if  not  him- 
self, had  been  carried  from  Africa,  in  a  ship  that  had  been 
fitted  out  under  the  protection  of  that  very  common  law 
by  men  breathing  that  same  pure  air,  and  sold  into  slavery 
in  a  colony  to  which  the  same  law  under  which  he  was  re- 
leased, had  followed  the  colonists.  Was  ever  so  absurd  a 
farce  enacted  as  that  which  was  enacted  by  the  Chief  Jus- 
tice of  England,  when  he  announced  in  Westminster  Hall 
before  the  assembled  bar  of  London,  that  the  air  breathed 
by  a  nation  of  slave-traders  was  too  pure  for  the  slave  him- 
self. Xone  but  an  Englishman  would  have  failed  to  dis- 
cover its  absurdity.  Where  then,  was  that  "genius  of  uni- 
versal emancipation"  referred  to  at  a  later  period  at  the 
Irish  Bar  b}^  Curran,  in  such  eloquent  language,  that  it  did 
not  waft  these  words  on  the  wings  of  that  pure  air  across 


34 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


the  channel  to  the  Emerald  Isle,  to  the  coasts  of  Africa,  to 
the  plantations  of  America  and  the  West  Indies,  or  to  the 
banks  of  the  Ganges  ?  Could  not  a  breath  of  that  pure  air 
be  afforded  at  least  for  the  ships  of  the  British  Navy,  then 
so  sedulously  guarding  English  slave  ships  through  the 
horrors  of  the  Middle  Passage"  from  French  cruisers? 
No !  that  pure  air  was  '  *  fixed  air ' '  which  could  not  extend 
beyond  the  shores  of  England,  and  the  wings  of  the 
"genius  of  universal  emancipation"  were  so  clipped  that 
it  was  a  more  clumsy  domestic  bird  than  the  barnyard  fowl. 

At  the  same  time  that  these  celebrated  words  were  uttered 
in  Westminster  Hall,  the  ministers  of  State,  and  king,  lords 
and  commons  in  Parliament,  were  cherishing  with  a  foster- 
ing hand  that  very  trade  which  had  consigned  Somerset 
to  slavery,  and  was  then  consigning  thousands  upon  thous- 
ands of  his  native  countrymen  to  the  same  fate  while  the 
boasted  navy  of  the  "Mistress  of  the  Seas"  was  escorting 
the  human  cargoes  in  safety  and  triumph  to  their  destina- 
tion, and  in  the  colonies  writs  and  executions  were  being 
issued,  according  to  forms  framed  in  Westminster  Hall,  to 
enforce  from  the  sale  of  the  bodies  of  human  beings,  the 
collection  of  debts,  due  to  men  who  breathed  the  "pure  air 
of  England, ' '  and  prided  themselves  on  the  liberties  of  the 
common  law. 

This  decision  of  Lord  Mansfield  was  one  of  those  acts  of 
judicial  legislation  for  which  he  was  so  famous,  and  it  was 
not  the  law.  Quite  as  able  judges  as  himself  had  previously 
decided  the  validity  and  legality  of  slavery  even  in  Eng- 
land, and  Lord  Stowell,  as  able  a  judge  and  purer  man 
than  he  was,  subsequently  ruled  very  differently  from  the 
decision  in  the  Somerset  case.  England  had  no  use  for 
slaves  at  home,  as  her  toiling  millions  supplied  every  de- 
mand for  labor  or  service.  Had  it  been  to  her  interest  to 
have  had  African  slaves  within  her  own  limits,  her  pure 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


35 


air  would  have  accommodated  itself  to  their  constitution. 
She  never  sacrificed  her  material  interests  to  her  philan- 
thropy. Notwithstanding  the  decision  of  Lord  Mansfield, 
it  was  twenty-five  years  before  the  prime  minister  of  Eng- 
land (the  younger  Pitt)  ventured  to  go  even  so  far,  as  to 
bring  in  a  bill  to  mitigate  the  horrors  '^of  the  Middle  Pas- 
sage," by  limiting  the  number  of  slaves  to  be  taken  on 
board  a  ship — it  was  forty-five  years  before  another  prime 
minister  ventured  to  advocate  the  abolition  of  the  slave 
trade,  and  seventy-one  years  before  slavery  was  abolished 
in  the  limited  slave  colonies  left  to  England  after  the 
American  Eevolution,  and  that  was  not  done  until  this 
small  interest  was  so  far  overshadowed  by  other  interests 
as  to  make  it  of  no  importance  to  her. 


CHAPTER  III 


In  order  to  understand  the  status  of  the  slave  trade  and 
slavery  in  the  United  States  after  their  independence  was 
achieved,  it  is  necessary  to  glance  at  the  progress  of  the 
Revolution  and  the  adoption  of  the  new  form  of  govern- 
ment after  its  close. 

In  1774,  the  contest  between  the  mother  country  and  the 
English  Colonies  of  North  America  approached  a  crisis,  and 
the  first  Continental  Congress  of  delegates  from  the  thir- 
teen colonies  assembled  at  Philadelphia  on  the  5th  of  Sep- 
tember of  that  year.  Fifteen  articles,  as  the  basis  of  an 
"American  Association,"  were  adopted  and  signed  on  the 
20th  of  October,  in  which,  among  other  things  the  slave 
trade  was  denounced,  and  entire  abstinence  from  it  and 
from  any  trade  with  those  engaged  in  it,  was  enjoined. 
This  had  been  preceded  by  the  Virginia  resolution  on  the 
same  subject  more  than  two  months,  but  the  war  which 
ensued  put  an  end  to  the  trade  during  its  continuance, 
much  more  effectually  than  any  resolutions  or  laws  could 
have  done. 

The  "Declaration  of  Colonial  Rights"  adopted  by  this 
Congress  enumerated  eleven  acts  of  Parliament  as  having 
been  passed  in  derogation  of  the  rights  of  the  colonies 
since  the  accession  of  George  III  to  the  throne,  to- wit  : 

1.  "The  Sugar  Act." — This  act  was  a  modification  of 
the  "Molasses  Act,"  by  which  the  duties  on  molasses  and 
sugar  were  lowered  and  a  few  unimportant  articles  were 
added  to  the  list  of  those  taxed. 

2.  "The  Stamp  Act." — This  act  never  had  been  exe- 
cuted and  had  been  repealed. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


37 


3  and  4.  ''The  Two  Quartering  Acts."— The  first  of 
these  acts  had  been  passed  in  1765,  after  the  close  of  the 
war  against  the  French  in  Canada,  which  resulted  in  the 
conquest  of  that  country  from  France,  greatly  to  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  northern  colonies.  It  was  intended  to 
quarter  troops  on  the  colonies  for  their  protection  against 
the  Indians  and  was  in  accordance  with  the  views  of  the 
elder  Pitt,  who  intimated  that  the  colonies  ought  to  bear  a 
portion  of  the  burthen  of  a  w^ar  made  for  their  benefit.  By 
the  terms  of  this  act,  the  colonial  authorities  were  required 
to  furnish  quarters,  firewood,  bedding,  drink,  soap,  and 
candles  to  the  troops  sent  into  the  colonies.  It  had  been  re- 
sisted or  evaded  and  had  been  allowed  to  expire. 

The  second  of  these  acts  was  a  re-enactment  of  the  first, 
in  consequence  of  the  disturbance  at  Boston. 

5.  ''The  Tea  Act." — This  act  imposed  a  duty  of  three 
pence  a  pound  on  tea  imported  into  the  colonies,  and  al- 
lowed a  drawback  of  the  duty  of  a  shilling  a  pound  on  the 
tea  imported  into  England,  when  re-shipped  to  the  colonies ; 
the  practical  effect  of  which  was  to  lower  the  duties  paid 
by  the  colonists. 

6.  "The  Act  Suspending  the  New  York  Legislature." — 
This  act  was  passed  in  consequence  of  the  continued  refusal 
of  that  legislature  to  comply  with  the  terms  of  the  quarter- 
ing acts. 

7  and  8.  "The  Acts  For  the  Trials  in  Great  Britain  of 
Offences  Committed  in  America." — These  acts  were  passed 
in  consequence  of  the  resistance  of  all  British  authority  at 
Boston. 

9.  "The  Boston  Port  Bill." — This  act  was  passed  in 
consequence  of  the  forcible  destruction  of  tea  in  Boston 
Harbor. 


38 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


10.  ''The  Act  For  Eegulating  the  Government  of  Mas- 
sachusetts."— This  Act  was  passed  in  consequence  of  the 
continuous  disturbances  by  the  people  of  that  colony. 

11.  ''The  Quebec  Act." — This  act  was  for  the  govern- 
ment of  Canada,  and  the  other  colonies  had  no  right  to  com- 
plain, except  so  far  as  it  extended  to  the  country  south  of 
the  lakes  and  west  of  those  colonies. 

It  is  well  to  keep  these  causes  of  complaint  in  mind,  when 
considering  the  causes  for  the  secession  of  the  Southern 
States  previous  to  the  late  war,  and  the  course  pursued  to- 
wards those  States. 

In  the  war  which  resulted  from  the  resistance  to  the  acts 
specified,  was  involved  a  great  principle  of  self-government, 
which  the  British  government  has  since  fully  acknowledged 
in  the  treatment  of  all  her  other  colonies,  but  it  must  be 
confessed  that  there  was  a  good  deal  of  turbulence  and 
violence  exhibited  by  American  colonists  in  the  first  stages 
of  the  contest.  Without  depreciating  the  public  spirit  dis- 
played by  the  people  of  Massachusetts  during  the  war 
which  ensued,  there  can  be  no  question  but  that  by  violence 
and  rashness  the  conflict  was  precipitated,  and  that  much 
forbearance  was  shown  by  some  of  the  British  military 
officials.  A  candid  review  of  the  history  of  the  difficulties 
preceding  actual  hostilities  must  lead  any  honest  mind  to 
the  conclusion  that  while  the  British  ministers  acted  un- 
constitutionally and  unwisely,  as  the  quarrel  approached  its 
crisis,  the  people  of  Massachusetts,  with  whom  the  conflict 
began,  exhibited  a  very  turbulent  spirit  and  often  acted 
with  unwarranted  violence. 

The  settlers  of  Massachusetts,  on  account  of  their  pecul- 
iar religious  theories,  had  from  the  very  beginning,  been 
impatient  of  all  control  from  the  mother  country  and 
anxious  to  thrown  it  off.  They  had  hailed  the  Common- 
wealth with  joy,  had  been  greatly  chagrined  at  the  restora- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


39 


tion  of  the  royal  authority  and.  had  been  very  much  em- 
bittered by  the  vacation  of  their  charter  and  the  los.-  of  the 
theocratic  form  of  government,  and  their  ministry  kept 
alive  the  fires  of  discontent  and  fanned  them  into  a  flame 
on  all  occasions.  The  same  feeling  existed  throughout 
New  England.  Virginia  on  the  contrary  had  been  always 
a  loyal  colony  and  had  not  acknowledged  the  Parliament 
or  the  Commonwealth  in  Cromwell's  time,  until  compelled 
to  do  so  by  a  force  sent  for  its  conc^tiest.  Its  people  had 
hailed  the  restoration  with  delight  and  there  was  no  senti- 
ment in  the  colony  demanding  a  separation  from  the 
mother  country  which  was  not  engendered  by  actual  or 
supposed  infringement  of  their  rights  as  British  subjects. 
Though  the  people  of  that  colony  had  little  direct  interest 
in  the  grievances  complained  of  against  the  British  govern- 
ment, as  the  articles  taxed  entered  very  little  into  their 
consumption,  and  no  troops  had  been  quartered  among 
them  in  an  offensive  manner  since  the  Parliamentary  ex- 
pedition, they  made  common  cause  vith  the  people  of  I\Ias- 
sachusetts,  as  it  was  a  ciuestion  of  power  which  involved  the 
rights  of  all  the  colonies.  The  difference  was  that  the  peo- 
ple of  Massachusetts  and  Xew  England  were  anxious  to 
bring  on  a  separation,  while  those  of  Virginia  were  not,  un- 
less it  was  necessary  for  the  protection  of  the  rights  of  all 
of  the  colonies.  The  statesmen  of  Virginia  entered  warmly 
into  the  dispute  both  by  speaking  and  writing,  and  when 
the  actual  collision  took  place  the  people  sprang  to  arms 
and  sent  to  Massachusetts  aid  in  both  men  and  provisions. 

It  was  the  attempt  to  coerce  the  people  of  Massachusetts, 
in  an  unconstitutional  manner,  to  compliance  with  uncon- 
stitutional laws,  on  the  part  of  the  British  government, 
more  than  any  actual  grievances  of  their  own.  that  aroused 
the  people  of  Virginia  to  action,  as  that  coercion  if  success- 
fully applied  to  one  colony,  might  be  used  for  the  destruc- 


40 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


tion  of  all  self-government  in  the  others.  This  became  the 
traditional  policy  of  Virginia  as  a  sovereign  State.  After 
the  struggle  began,  she  gave  a  leader  to  the  continental 
army,  her  wisest  and  best  statesmen  to  the  colonial  councils, 
her  arms-bearing  citizens  to  the  ranks,  and  her  resources 
to  the  prosecution  of  the  war.  That  war  which  was  begun 
ill  Massachusetts,  long  after  it  ceased  to  exist  within  the 
limits  of  that  State,  was  finally,  practically,  ended  on  the 
soil  of  Virginia,  after  that  soil  had  been  terribly  ravaged 
by  the  invading  armies  of  Great  Britain. 

Motives  similar  to  those  which  actuated  Virginia, 
prompted  the  action  of  all  of  the  other  Southern  colonies, 
and  none  suffered  greater  losses  in  war  for  the  common  de- 
fence than  South  Carolina.  This  statement  is  not  made  in 
order  to  claim  for  Virginia  and  the  other  Southern  States 
more  than  their  due  share  of  credit  for  services  in  the  war 
of  the  Revolution,  nor  to  depreciate  the  valuable  services 
rendered  by  the  more  northern  states  of  the  confederation. 

The  war  was  prosecuted  by  the  colonies  as  a  confederacy 
of  sovereign  States.  The  Continental  Congress  was  in  fact 
but  a  congress  of  commissioners  or  embassadors,  whose  acts 
derived  their  validity  from  the  tacit  adoption  and  sanction 
of  the  several  States,  and  the  delegates  were  at  all  times 
subject  to  recall  and  substitution,  by  the  appointment  of 
others — a  power  which  was  repeatedly  exercised.  The  Dec- 
laration of  Independence  itself,  was  made  in  accordance 
with  powers  expressly  delegated  for  that  purpose  to  the 
representatives  of  the  several  appointing  powers,  and  de- 
rived its  force  not  from  the  action  of  Congress,  but  from 
the  adoption  of  that  action  by  those  represented  in  that 
body. 

In  the  case  of  Virginia,  her  independence  had  been  de- 
clared by  a  convention  of  her  own,  and  a  State  Government 
had  been  actually  organized  in  advance  of  the  action  of 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


41 


Congress,  and  she  was  the  first  thus  to  assert  her  sover- 
eignty. On  the  loth  of  May.  1776.  the  Virginia  convention 
resolved  to  adopt  a  bill  of  rights  and  frame  a  State  govern- 
ment, and  on  the  29th  of  June  following,  the  government 
was  put  into  operation  by  the  election  of  a  governor  and 
other  otficers — a  Bill  of  Rights  and  State  Constitution  hav- 
ing been  framed  and  adopted  in  the  meantime. 

Articles  of  confederation  were  proposed  in  1777.  more 
than  a  year  after  the  adoption  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, for  ratification  by  the  thirteen  sovereign  States. 
These  articles  reqtiired  the  unanimous  ratification  of  all  of 
the  States,  and  as  Alaryland  withheld  her  consent  to  this, 
until  the  1st  of  ]\Iarch.  17S1.  they  did  not  go  into  effect 
until  that  time,  In  the  meanwhile  the  Congress  had  con- 
tmued  to  exercise  its  permissive  powers  in  the  prosecution 
of  the  war.  but  it  had  no  meaus  of  enforcing  its  edicts  ex- 
cept in  the  voluntary  compliance  of  the  several  States. 

The  first  three  articles  were  as  folLjws ; 

Article  I.  Th^;^  style  of  this  conft^deracy  shall  be  '"'The 
United  States  of  America,  " 

Art.  II.  '"Each  State  retains  its  sovereignty,  freedom 
and  independence,  and  every  power,  jurisdiction  and  right, 
which  is  not  by  this  confederation  expressly  delegated  to 
the  United  States  in  Congress  assembled." 

Art.  III.  ■  •  The  several  States  hereby  severally  enter  into 
a  fii-m  league  of  friendship  with  each  other  for  their 
common  defence,  the  security  of  their  liabilities  and  their 
mutual  and  general  welfare,  binding  themselves  to  assist 
each  other  against  all  force  opposed  to.  or  attacks  made 
upon  them,  or  any  of  them,  on  account  of  religion,  sover- 
eignty, trade  or  any  other  pretence  whatever.'' 

The  other  articles  of  confederation  conferred  upon  Con- 
gress Very  little  more  power  than  it  had  been  exercising. 
All  important  measures  required  the  concurrence  of  nine 


42 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


States,  the  votes  being  given  by  the  delegates  from  each 
State  as  a  unit,  and  not  in  their  individual  capacity. 

The  right  of  the  States  to  recall  their  delegates  and  to 
appoint  others  was  expressly  reserved,  so  that  five  States 
acting  together,  could  at  any  time  block  the  government, 
and  the  latter  had  no  means  of  enforcing  its  decrees  when 
made,  but  had  to  rely  upon  the  voluntary  compliance  of 
the  States  as  before.  It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  govern- 
ment organized  under  the  articles  of  confederation  re- 
mained still  a  mere  confederacy  of  several  independent 
States.  When  peace  was  finally  made  with  Great  Britain, 
that  power  recognized  the  sovereignty  and  independence  of 
the  several  States  of  New  Hampshire,  Massachusetts,  Ehode 
Island,  Connecticut,  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania, 
Delaware,  Maryland,  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  South  Caro- 
lina and  Georgia  by  name,  and  not  the  sovereignty  and  in- 
dependence of  the  United  States. 

After  the  treaty  of  peace,  under  the  navigation  laws  of 
Great  Britain,  American  vessels  trading  with  that  country, 
were  restricted  to  the  importation  of  products  of  the  several 
States  to  which  they  belonged,  which  put  those  States  upon 
the  footing  of  so  many  separate  nations. 

The  action  of  the  several  States  upon  the  subject  of 
slavery  and  the  slave  trade  during  the  war  and  afterwards 
to  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States  was  as  follows: 

Delaware,  as  before  stated,  by  her  constitution  adopted 
in  1776,  prohibited  the  further  introduction  of  slaves. 

Virginia  did  the  same  thing  by  her  law  adopted  in  1778. 

Pennsylvania,  whose  legislature  had  ceased  to  be  under 
the  control  of  the  Quakers,  as  they  refused  to  take  part  in 
the  Revolution,  adopted  a  law  in  1780,  prohibiting  the 
further  introduction  of  slaves  and  giving  freedom  to  all 
children  of  slave  mothers  born  after  its  passage. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


43 


jMassaehusetts  incorporated  a  declaration  in  her  bill  of 
rights  adopted  in  1780,  that  ''all  men  are  born  free  and 
equal,"  and  under  that  declaration  it  was  decided  by  the 
Supreme  Court  of  that  State  in  1783,  that  slavery  was  pro- 
hibited. It  cannot  be  claimed  that  this  declaration  was  in- 
tended to  have  that  effect,  for  if  such  had  been  the  case  it 
would  not  have  been  left  to  judicial  interpretation  to  give 
it,  but  an  express  provision  would  have  been  incorporated 
on  the  subject.  It  was  a  species  of  judicial  legislation  which 
was  submitted  to  because  no  important  interest  was  at 
stake.  There  were  a  little  over  6.000  slaves  in  Massachusetts 
at  the  date  of  the  Revolution,  distributed  in  small  numbers 
among  the  owners  and  employed  mostly  as  household  serv- 
ants. The  population  was  largely  engaged  in  com_merce, 
fisheries,  manufactures,  etc..  and  the  character  of  the  agri- 
culture was  not  at  all  adapted  to  slave  labor.  Nothing  of 
consecjuence  therefore,  was  to  be  gained  by  contesting  the 
validity  of  the  decision,  and  it  was  the  easiest  way  of  getting 
rid  of  the  matter  by  quiet  submission. 

New  Hampshire  adopted  a  similar  clause  in  her  second 
constitution  in  1783.  and  under  that  it  was  held  that  free- 
dom was  guaranteed  to  all  children  born  after  its  adoption. 

Maryland  adopted  in  1783.  laws  in  regard  to  the  intro- 
duction of  slaves  similar  to  those  of  Virginia. 

Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island,  in  1784.  adopted  laAvs  on 
the  subject  of  slavery  similar  to  those  of  Pennsylvania. 

The  effect  of  these  laws  and  decisions  was  to  put  an  end 
to  the  slave  trade  in  all  of  the  states  but  North  and  South 
Carolina  and  Georgia ;  to  abolish  it  in  Massachusetts  and 
provide  for  its  gradual  extinction  in  New  Hampshire. 
Rhode  Island,  Connecticut  and  Pennsylvania,  while  it  still 
remained  as  before  in  the  other  states.  It  has  been  alleged, 
and  probably  was  true,  that  a  large  number  of  the  slaves 
in  the  northern  states  were  carried  to  the  South  and  sold 


44 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


there,  to  avoid  the  operation  of  the  emancipation  measures 
which  were  initiated.  This  allegation  receives  very  strong 
confirmation  from  a  comparison  of  the  free  colonies'  popu- 
lation at  the  north  at  different  periods,  with  the  number  of 
slaves  known  to  be  there  at  the  date  of  the  institution  of 
emancipation  measures,  when  taken  in  connection  with  the 
increase  to  that  colored  population,  from  freed  slaves  and 
runaways  from  the  South. 

Notwithstanding  the  provisions  for  abolishing  slavery  in 
the  New  England  states,  the  merchants  and  traders  of  those 
states  resumed  the  importation  of  slaves  from  Africa  to  the 
Carolinas  and  Georgia  immediately  after  the  close  of  the 
war.  North  Carolina,  however,  had  denounced  the  trade  as 
impolitic,  and  imposed  a  duty  on  future  importations  which 
furnished  an  impediment  to  it,  so  far  as  that  state  was  con- 
cerned.' 

The  confederation  which,  during  the  war,  under  the  pres- 
sure of  the  public  danger,  had  answered  the  purpose,  was 
found  to  work  very  badly  when  peace  ensued  and  the 
states  were  no  longer  stimulated  to  comply  with  the  requisi- 
tions of  Congress  by  immediate  necessity.  Though  the 
states  were  all  vested  with  full  powers  to  regulate  their 
domestic  affairs,  yet  there  was  a  large  debt  contracted  in 
common  which  it  was  necessary  to  provide  for,  and  as  the 
states  were  forbidden  by  the  Articles  of  Confederation  to 
make  treaties,  and  Congress  had  no  power  to  impose  taxes 
or  duties  on  imports  or  exports,  which  power  rested  en- 
tirely in  the  state  legislatures,  there  was  a  very  great  de- 
rangement of  the  finances,  commerce  and  business  of  the 
country,  entailing  very  ruinous  consequences  upon  all 
classes  and  interests.  It  became,  therefore,  necessary  to 
provide  a  remedy  for  existing  evils,  and  a  convention  of 
delegates  from  the  states  assembled  at  Philadelphia  in  the 
year  1787,  for  the  purpose  of  revising  the  Federal  system. 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


45 


This  convention  was  assembled  in  accordance  with  the  rec- 
ommendation of  a  previous  one,  that  had  assembled  at 
Annapolis  on  the  invitation  of  Virginia,  but  found  its 
powers  inadequate. 

The  deliberations  of  the  Philadelphia  convention,  which 
were  presided  over  by  General  Washington,  resulted  in  the 
adoption  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  for  rec- 
ommendation to  the  states  for  their  ratification,  and  by  the 
terms  of  the  Constitution,  it  was  provided  that  it  should  go 
into  effect  when  ratified  by  nine  states,  as  to  the  states  rati- 
fying it. 

There  were  many  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the  formation 
of  the  Constitution  by  reason  of  conflicting  views  and  inter- 
ests, and  the  instrument  as  framed  by  the  convention  was 
the  result  of  a  compromise  of  those  views  and  interests. 
The  only  questions  arising  in  regard  to  slavery  was  in  rela- 
tion to  the  basis  of  representation  in  Congress  and  taxation, 
the  foreign  slave  trade  and  the  restoration  of  fugitive 
slaves.  The  questions  in  regard  to  representation  and  taxa- 
tion were  settled  by  compromise,  as  was  that  in  regard  to 
the  slave  trade.  Virginia  and  Maryland  were  in  favor  of 
an  absolute  and  immediate  prohibition  of  the  foreign  slave 
trade,  while  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  opposed  any  inter- 
ference with  it.  With  the  two  latter  states  some  of  the  New 
England  delegates  sided,  and  after  much  discussion  a  com- 
promise was  finally  effected,  by  adopting  a  provision  pro- 
hibiting Congress  from  preventing,  prior  to  the  year  1808, 
the  importation  of  any  persons  the  states  might  think  proper 
to  admit,  but  giving  the  power  to  impose  a  duty  on  such 
persons  in  the  meantime,  not  to  exceed  $10  per  head.  This 
compromise  was  effected  by  an  arrangement  between  the 
delegates  of  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  on  the  one  side 
and  the  New  England  delegates  on  the  other,  by  which  it 
was  agreed  to  insert  a  provision  vesting  Congress  with  the 


46 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


power  to  pas^  navigation  laws  by  a  majority  vote — ^which 
was  earnestly  desired  by  New  England  but  was  opposed  by 
some  of  the  other  states — and  to  adopt  the  restriction  pro- 
hibiting any  interference  with  the  slave  trade  until  the 
time  designated. 

For  the  provision  in  regard  to  the  slave  trade  as  adopted, 
Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire  and  Connecticut,  the  only 
New  England  States  represented,  voted,  while  Virginia 
voted  with  some  of  the  other  states  against  it  in  all  its 
stages — the  final  vote  being,  Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire, 
Connecticut,  Maryland,  North  and  South  South!  Carolina 
in  the  affimative,  and  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Delaware 
and  Virginia  in  the  negative;  absent  or  not  voting,  New 
York,  Rhode  Island  and  Georgia. 

The  clause  in  regard  to  the  restoration  of  fugitive  slaves 
was  adopted  without  any  objection  from  any  quarter,  and 
it  was  worded  in  almost  the  identical  language  of  the  pro- 
vision on  the  same  subject  contained  in  the  old  compact  of 
''The  United  Colonies  of  New  England."  Without  the  pro- 
vision for  the  return  of  slaves  escaping  into  any  of  the 
states  or  the  public  territory,  not  a  solitary  Southern  State 
would  have  accepted  the  Constitution,  and  its  necessity, 
propriety  and  justice  were  conceded  on  all  sides  without 
question.  When  the  Constitution  was  submitted  to  the 
states  for  ratification,  it  met  with  a  good  deal  of  opposition 
because  it  was  thought  to  impose  too  great  restrictions  on 
the  rights  of  the  states,  but  it  was  finally  ratified  by  the  end 
of  July,  1788,  by  eleven  states,  and  steps  were  taken  to 
organize  the  government  under  it,  which  was  done  in  April, 
1789,  by  the  meeting  of  the  first  Congress  under  the  Consti- 
tution and  the  inauguration  of  General  Washington  as 
President. 

North  Carolina  did  not  ratify  the  Constitution  until  No- 
vember, 1789,  nor  Rhode  Island  until  May,  1790,  and  until 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


47 


they  did  ratify  it  they  remained  as  foreign  nations  to  the 
other  states.  When  the  ratification  was  under  consideration, 
there  was  much  discussion  as  to  the  construction  of  various 
clauses,  and  most  of  the  states  were  induced  to  give  their 
assent  by  the  hope  of  adoption  of  amendments  explaining 
all  ambiguities  and  objectionable  clauses,  and  the  ratifica- 
tion was  accompanied  with  the  recommendation  of  such 
amendments  as  were  desired. 

In  passing  the  ordinance  ratifying  the  Constitution,  the 
Virginia  convention  adopted  an  explanatory  preamble,  de- 
claring that  when  the  powers  delegated  should  be  abused 
they  would  be  resumed,  and  the  New  York  convention  ac- 
companied the  ratification  with  a  declaration  of  the  right 
to  withdraw  it.  It  is  curious  in  view  of  subsequent  events, 
that  Massachusetts  proposed  as  an  amendment  ''That  all 
powers  not  expressly  delegated  to  Congress  should  be  re- 
served to  the  states,"  and  another  "That  no  person  be  tried 
for  any  crime  (cases  in  the  military  and  naval  service  ex- 
cepted) without  previous  indictment  by  a  grand  jury;  and 
that  in  civil  cases  the  right  of  trial  by  jury  be  preserved. ' ' 
The  first  of  these  was  recommended  by  Virginia  and  South 
Carolina  also,  and  the  last  by  Virginia,  and  both  were  sub- 
sequently adopted  as  amendments!  to  the  Constitution  on 
the  recommendation  of  the  first  Congress,  with  only  a 
change  of  phraseology  not  at  all  effecting  their  import. 
Massachusetts  has  changed  her  views  since  she  asserted 
these  doctrines  of  states '  rights  and  civil  liberty. 

The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  left  slavery  in  the 
states  precisely  where  it  was  before,  the  only  provision  hav- 
ing any  reference  to  it  whatever  being  that  which  fixed  the 
ratio  of  representation  in  the  House  of  Representatives  and 
direct  taxation ;  that  in  reference  to  the  foreign  slave  trade, 
and  that  guaranteeing  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves.  Had 
it  been  proposed  to  insert  any  provision  giving  Congress 


48 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


any  power  over  the  subject  in  the  states,  it  would  have  been 
resisted,  and  the  insertion  of  such  provision  would  have 
insured  the  rejection  of  the  Constitution.  The  government 
framed  under  this  Constitution  being  one  of  delegated 
powers  entirely,  those  powers  were  necessarily  limited  to 
the  objects  for  which  they  were  granted,  but  to  prevent  all 
misconception,  the  9th  and  10th  amendments  were  adopted, 
the  first  providing  that  ' '  The  enumeration  in  the  Constitu- 
tion of  certain  rights  shall  not  be  construed  to  deny  or  dis- 
parage others  retained  by  the  people,''  and  the  other  that: 
''The  powers  not  delegated  to  the  United  States  by  the 
Constitution,  nor  prohibited  by  it  to  the  states,  are  reserved 
to  the  states  respectively,  or  to  the  people." 

It  has  now  been  shown  how  slavery  originated  in  the 
United  States  and  that  the  Federal  Constitution  left  its 
regulation  in  every  particular,  where  it  belonged,  that  is 
to  the  several  states  where  it  existed,  save  only  in  regard  to 
the  foreign  slave  trade  and  the  guarantee  for  the  return  of 
fugitive  slaves  as  mentioned. 

State  action  had  already  provided  for  the  removal  of 
slavery  from  several  of  the  northern  states,  and  this  was 
followed,  later,  by  a  law  adopted  in  New  York  in  1799,  pro- 
viding that  all  children  of  slaves  born  after  the  4th  of  July 
of  that  year  should  be  free,  males  at  28  and  females  at  25 
years  of  age,  and  a  law  adopted  in  New  Jersey  in  1804,  pro- 
viding that  all  children  of  slaves  born  after  the  4th  of  July 
of  that  year  should  be  free,  the  males  at  25  and  the  females 
at  21  years  of  age.  This  was  the  last  of  the  acts  for  the 
emancipation  of  slavery  where  it  previously  existed  and 
therefore,  so  far  as  regarded  the  original  thirteen  states, 
slavery  was  confined  to  Delaware,  Maryland,  Virginia, 
North  and  South  Carolina  and  Georgia,  except  as  to  the 
remnants  left  in  the  other  states  by  the  acts  for  gradual 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


49 


emancipation,  whicli  lingered  in  some  of  them  for  a  long 
time. 

If  African  slavery  was  a  crime,  tvIio  was  responsible  for  4- 

it?  Did  the  sole  guilt  or  the  greater  part  of  it  rest  upon 
the  shoulders  of  the  colonists  who  purchased  the  slaves  al- 
ready ravished  from  their  homes  in  the  plains  and  wilds  of 
Africa,  or  on  the  shoulders  of  the  descendants  of  the  orig- 
inal purchasers  who  found  the  institution  already  estab- 
lished as  a  settled  policy,  or  did  it  rest  with  those  who  pro- 
cured the  enslavement  of  these  ignorant  and  degraded  bar- 
barians and  reaped  the  enormous  profits  resulting  from 
their  sale  in  their  persons  ? 

Treating  it  as  national  or  individual  sin.  where  does  the 
guilt  lie  ?  The  mercantile  marines  of  Great  Britain  and 
New  England  are  monuments  to  the  African  slave  trade, 
upon  the  profits  of  which  they  were  mainly  built  up. 

It  has  been  often  said  that  the  assertion  contained  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  ''That  all  men  are  created 
equal,  etc.,"  was  entirely  inconsistent  with  the  continuation 
of  slavery  in  any  of  the  United  States ;  and  that  the  states 
which  continued  it  Avere  guilty  of  a  great  inconsistency. 
TVlio  had  then  a  right  to  make  this  criticism  ?  "Was  it  the 
Englishman,  with  Lord  ^Mansfield's  decision  staring  him  in 
the  face,  and  his  boast  of  liberty  under  the  common  law  on 
his  tongue,  while  his  heel  was  upon  the  neck  of  Ireland,  his 
ships  ploughing  the  main,  freighted  with  human  mer- 
chandise packed  to  suffocation,  and  his  writs  of  execution 
levied  upon  the  bodies  of  human  beings  to  satisfy  his  de- 
mands ?  "Was  it  the  Frenchman,  who,  equally  guiltj'  in  the 
traffic  in  human  flesh,  in  the  name  of  ''Liberty,  Equality 
and  Fraternity''  glutted  the  guillotine  with  the  blood  of 
his  brethren,  until  he  himself  was  forced  to  take  refuge 
from  his  own  "Liberty"  under  the  protection  of  a  despotism 
that  kept  watch  upon  his  very  thoughts  ?  Was  it  the  Dutch- 


50 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


man,  whose  ships  had  carried  the  traffic  in  slaves  to  every 
clime  and  who  landed  the  first  cargo  within  the  limits  of  the 
United  States?  "Was  it  the  Russian,  who  had  bleeding 
Poland  under  his  feet  and  caused  order  to  reign  in  Warsaw, 
while  he  peopled  Siberia  with  every  age  and  sex,  and  his 
ears  were  gladdened  by  the  sound  of  the  well-plied  knout  ? 
Was  it  the  Prussian,  the  Austrian,  the  Dane,  the  Swede,  or 
the  Italian?  The  Portuguese,  the  Spaniard  and  the  Turk 
have  not  troubled  themselves  about  the  matter. 

The  fact  is  that  the  assertion  of  independence  was  made 
by  the  Continental  Congress,  by  a  resolution  adopted  on 
the  2d  of  July,  1776,  in  the  following  words: 

"Resolved,  That  these  United  Colonies  are,  and,  of  right, 
ought  to  be.  Free  and  Independent  States,  that  they  are  ab- 
solved from  all  allegiance  to  the  British  crown,  and  that  all 
political  connection  between  them  and  the  state  of  Great 
Britain  is,  and  ought  to  be,  totally  dissolved." 

That  was  the  authoritative  assertion  of  the  independence 
of  the  colonies,  and  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
adopted  afterwards  was  merely  a  manifesto  put  forth  to  the 
world  to  show  the  reasons  which  impelled  them  to  the  step 
and  to  justify  it.  The  assertion  that  "all  men  are  created 
equal,"  was  no  more  enacted  by  that  declaration  as  a  settled 
principle  than  that  other  which  defined  George  III  to  be  "  a 
tyrant  and  unfit  to  be  the  ruler  of  a  free  people."  The 
Declaration  of  Independence  contained  a  number  of  un- 
doubtedly correct  principles  and  some  abstract  generalities 
uttered  under  the  enthusiasm  and  excitement  of  a  struggle 
for  the  right  of  self-government. 

The  portion  of  it  in  question  was  not  designed  for  the 
wide  application  which  is  sought  to  be  made  of  it,  nor  is  it 
capable  of  that  application.  The  intention  of  it  was  to 
assert  the  right  of  the  people,  on  whose  part  the  declaration 
was  made,  to  equality  under  the  law  with  all  other  British 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


51 


subjects,  and  to  maintain  their  right  to  set  up  a  new  govern- 
ment for  themselves,  when  the  one  under  which  they  had 
been  living  had  been  perverted  to  their  oppression.  If  it 
was  intended  to  assert  the  absolute  equality  of  all  men,  it 
was  false  in  principle  and  in  fact. 

Taken  in  its  literal  sense,  it  might  be  construed  to  mean 
that  all  men  are  created  equal  in  every  respect,  but  does  any 
one  believe,  or  will  any  one  ever  believe,  that  the  native 
Congo,  the  Hottentot  or  the  Australian  negro,  is  the  equal, 
mentally,  physically  and  morally,  of  the  Caucasian  ? 

Whatever  construction  the  words  quoted  and  those  fol- 
lowing them  may  admit  of,  let  it  be  borne  in  mind,  that  they 
belong  to  the  argument  and  not  to  the  fact.  The  separation 
and  independence  were  asserted  by  the  resolution  adopted 
on  the  2d  of  July,  and  not  by  the  declaration  adopted  on 
the  4th,  and  the  latter  was  no  more  a  part  of  what  was 
authoritatively  established,  than  the  ohitu  dictum  of  a  judge 
is  a  part  of  his  decision. 

The  truth  is,  that  several  of  the  statesmen  of  the  South 
and  especially  of  Virginia,  deplored  slavery  as  an  evil  and 
expressed  the  hope  that  at  some  future  time,  in  some  way 
that  might  be  desired,  the  institution  might  be  abolished  in 
such  manner  as  to  secure  the  welfare  of  both  races,  but  none 
of  them  could  suggest  any  mode  for  doing  so,  and  though 
perfectly  sincere,  they  contented  themselves  with  expressing 
the  hope  that  the  way  might  be  discovered. 

Slavery  was  a  fixed  fact,  fastened  upon  the  colonies  by 
the  mother  country,  and  in  the  South,  the  slaves  bore  such  a 
proportion  to  the  white  population  and  the  whole  business 
of  the  country  was  so  identified  with  their  labor,  that  it  was 
impossible  to  emancipate  them,  without  entailing  on  both 
races  evils  far  greater  than  those  supposed  to  result  from 
the  existence  of  slavery  itself.  It  was  a  practical  question 
with  w^hich  the  statesmen  of  the  country  had  to  deal  as 


52 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


practical  men,  and  all  they  could  do,  was  to  allow  the  system 
to  remain,  as  the  best  for  all  parties  under  the  circum- 
stances, without  reverting  to  the  dangerous  experiment  of 
the  ideal  schemes  of  a  false  philanthropy. 

As  to  the  slave  trade,  Delaware,  Virginia  and  Maryland 
had  already  put  an  end  to  it  as  soon  as  they  were  vested 
with  the  power  to  do  so,  and  North  Carolina  followed  suit 
very  shortly  after  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  and 
the  prohibition  would  probably  have  been  made  general, 
but  for  the  combination  of  the  New  England  states  with  the 
two  southern  states  that  were  in  favor  of  having  the  trade 
continued. 

It  would  not  be  amiss  to  notice  what  was  transpiring  in 
England  on  this  subject  at  the  time  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion was  being  adopted.  Clarkson,  Wilberforce  and  others 
were  agitating  the  question  of  the  slave  trade  at  this  time, 
and  the  utmost  that  the  younger  Pitt,  then  at  the  head  of 
the  government,  would  venture  to  do,  was  to  procure  the 
passage  of  an  act  of  Parliament,  for  the  mitigation  of  the 
atrocities  of  the  "Middle  Passage''  by  which  it  was  pro- 
vided that  slave  ships  should  not  carry  beyond  a  certain 
number  of  slaves  in  proportion  to  the  tonnage. 

Even  this  bill  met  with  strong  opposition  and  among 
others,  from  Lord  Chancellor  Thurlow*  "the  Ruler  of  the 
King's  conscience."  In  opposing  the  bill  he  said:  "It  ap- 
pears that  the  French  have  offered  premiums  to  encourage 
the  African  trade,  and  that  they  have  succeeded.  The 
natural  presumption  therefore  is,  that  we  ought  to  do  the 
same."  He  further  said:  "One  witness  has  come  to  your 
Lordship 's  bar  with  a  face  of  woe,  his  eyes  full  of  tears  and 
his  countenance  fraught  with  horror,  and  said  'My  Lords, 
I  am  ruined  if  you  pass  this  bill!  I  have  risked  £30,000 
on  the  trade  of  this  year !  It  is  all  I  have  been  able  to  gain 
by  my  industry,  and  if  I  lose  it,  I  must  go  to  the  hospital ! 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


53 


I  desire  of  you  to  think  of  such  things,  my  Lords,  in  your 
humane  phrenzy  and  to  show  some  humanity  to  the  whites 
as  well  as  the  negroes. '  ' ' 

The  bill,  however,  passed  with  amendments  to  grant  com- 
pensation for  losses,  and  this  was  as  far  as  English  states- 
manship would  venture  to  go  at  that  time.  Was  it  to  be 
expected  that  American  statesmen  should  be  better,  wiser 
and  more  philanthropic  than  English  statesmen  ? 

Shortly  after  the  close  of  the  war,  Virginia  had  ceded 
to  the  Confederation  for  the  common  benefit  of  all  the 
states,  the  territory  northwest  of  the  Ohio  river;  and  Mas- 
sachusetts, New  York  and  Connecticut  had  ceded  their 
rights,  (?)  The  claim  of  Connecticut  skipped  over  Penn- 
sylvania and  that  state  made  a  very  good  bargain  for  her- 
self by  securing  the  title  to  the  lands  in  what  has  since  been 
known  as  the  "Western  Reserve,"  though  no  officer  or 
soldier  or,  so  far  as  is  known,  citizen  of  hers,  had  even  been 
in  the  northwestern  territory. 

Virginia's  original  charter,  the  oldest  of  all  covered  the 
country,  but  independent  of  that,  it  had  been  conquered 
from  the  Indians  and  British  by  the  forces  of  Virginia 
under  George  Rogers  Clarke.  It  was  a  magnificent  empire 
which  Virginia  thus  surrendered  for  the  common  good  and 
for  the  cause  of  the  Union  of  the  states,  and  the  only  com- 
pensation she  asked  was,  that  the  land  grants  pledged  her 
own  soldiers  should  be  ratified. 

During  the  sitting  of  the  convention  which  framed  the 
Constitution,  the  Congress,  which  was  in  session,  adopted 
the  celebrated  ordinance  of  1787,  for  the  government  of  the 
territory  northwest  of  the  Ohio  river,  in  which  ordinance 
was  contained  a  prohibition  of  slavery  in  that  territory 
forever,  and  also  a  provision  for  the  recovery  of  slaves  es- 
caping into  the  territory  similar  to  that  incorporated  into 
the  Constitution. 


54 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


At  the  first  session  of  the  first  Congress,  under  the  new 
Constitution,  an  act  was  passed  for  the  government  of  the 
territory  northwest  of  the  Ohio  river,  by  which  the  ordi- 
nance of  1787  v/as  recognized  and  confirmed. 

In  1787,  South  Carolina  had  surrendered  her  claim  to 
all  territory  west  of  the  present  limits,  and  in  1790,  North 
Carolina  ceded  to  the  United  States  that  part  of  her  terri- 
tory which  subsequently  became  the  state  of  Tennessee,  with 
a  stipulation,  "that  no  regulation  made  or  to  be  made  by 
Congress  shall  tend  to  the  emancipation  of  slaves." 

In  1791,  Vermont,  formed  out  of  part  of  the  territory 
of  New  York,  with  the  consent  of  the  legislature  of  that 
state,  was  admitted  into  the  Union  as  one  of  the  states  and 
came  in  without  slavery,  which  was  forbidden  by  her  consti- 
tution. 

Kentucky  (formed  out  of  the  territory  of  Virginia,  south 
of  the  Ohio  river,  with  the  assent  of  her  legislature)  in 
1792  was  admitted  into  the  Union,  and  came  in  with  slavery 
as  it  existed  in  Virginia  and  with  similar  laws  on  the 
subject. 

In  1793,  Congress  passed  an  act  to  carry  into  effect  the 
provision  of  the  Constitution  for  the  restitution  of  fugitive 
slaves,  providing  for  their  delivery  to  the  owners  by  order 
of  any  United  States  judge,  or  any  magistrate  of  the  city, 
town  or  county  where  they  might  be  arrested,  on  due  proofs 
of  ownership,  etc. 

In  1796,  Tennessee,  formed  out  of  the  territory  which 
had  been  ceded  by  North  Carolina,  was  admitted  into  the 
Union,  and  came  in  with  slavery  as  it  existed  in  North 
Carolina  and  with  similar  laws  in  regard  to  it. 

In  1798,  Georgia  adopted  a  new  Constitution,  in  which 
was  a  clause  forbidding  the  importation  of  slaves  from 
"Africa  or  any  foreign  country."  In  this  same  year  Con- 
gress passed  an  act  for  the  establishment  of  the  Mississippi 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


55 


territoiy  out  of  the  territory  acquired  from  Great  Britain, 
wliicli  constituted  that  part  of  British  TTest  Florida  lying 
betvreen  a  line  drawn  due  east  from  the  mouth  of  the  Yazoo 
to  the  Chattahoochie  river  and  the  31st  degree  of  latitude. 
The  act  provided  for  the  government  and  organization  of 
the  ^lississippi  territory'  in  ever^'  respect  like  the  Xorth 
AYestern  territory,  except  that  slavery  vas  not  to  be  pro- 
hibited, but  an  amendement  was  incorporated  into  the  act 
wdthout  opposition,  on  motion  of  a  representative  from 
South  Carolina,  prohibiting  the  introduction  of  slaves  into 
the  territory  from  withotit  the  United  States. 

Immediately  after  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution, 
South  Carolina  had  passed  a  lav  prohibiting  the  introduc- 
tion of  slaA'es  from  foreign  countries  for  a  limited  period, 
which  was  contintied  by  renewal  from  time  to  time,  and  as 
North  Carolina  had  adopted  a  permanent  law  on  the  sub- 
ject, the  foreign  slave  trade  was  now  prohibited  in  all  of 
the  states  as  well  as  in  the  public  territories,  but  it  con- 
tinued to  be  carried  on  by  English,  Xew  England  and  Xew 
York  traders  within  the  limits  of  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia  despite  the  laws. 

In  1802,  Georgia  ceded  to  the  United  States  all  of  her 
territory  west  of  her  present  limits,  including  her  claim  to 
the  ^Mississippi  territory.  This  cession  including  in  it  the 
Mississippi  territory,  embraced  all  of  the  states  of  ]^Tississippi 
and  Alabama  which  was  north  of  the  31st  degree  of  latittide 
and  the  compact  made  v-ith  Georgia  stipulated  that  wiien 
the  population  reached  the  ntimber  of  60.000.  the  ceded  ter- 
ritory should  be  erected  into  a  state  on  the  conditions  con- 
tained in  the  ordinance  of  1767,  '"That  article  only  excepted 
which  prohibits  slavery.'' 

In  1803.  on  the  complaint  of  South  Carolina  of  the  im- 
portation, in  violation  of  her  laws,  of  slaves  from  Africa,  as 
weU  as  of  free  persons  from  the  French  West  Indies,  Con- 


56 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


gress  passed  an  act  imposing  a  fine  of  $1,000  on  the  captain 
of  a  vessel  for  the  importation  of  such  persons  in  violation 
of  the  laws  of  a  state,  with  forfeiture  of  the  vessel. 
Next  year,  however,  South  Carolina  repealed  her  laws 
against  the  African  slave  trade,  and  it  continued  to  be 
lawful  there  until  1808. 

In  the  same  year  Ohio,  erected  out  of  part  of  the  north- 
western territory,  was  admitted  into  the  Union  and  came  in 
without  slavery. 

In  this  year  Louisiana,  which  had  been  re-ceded  to  France 
by  Spain,  was  ceded  to  the  United  States  by  the  French 
government,  with  a  stipulation  in  the  treaty  of  cession  that 
the  inhabitants  should  be  secure  in  their  liberty,  property 
and  religion  and  should  be  admitted,  as  soon  as  possible, 
according  to  the  principles  of  the  Federal  Constitution  to 
the  enjoyment  of  the  rights  of  citizens  of  the  United  States. 
The  territory  thus  ceded,  embraced  as  claimed  by  the 
United  States,  all  of  the  territory  west  of  the  Mississippi 
and  south  of  the  31st  degree  of  latitude  to  the  western 
boundary  of  the  old  Spanish  province  of  Florida.  Slavery 
existed  in  Louisiana  at  the  time  of  its  acquisition,  having 
been  established  there  by  the  French  government,  and  there 
could  be  no  question  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  guarantee  to 
the  inhabitants  of  security  in  their  property,  as  the  right  of 
property  in  slaves  was  universally  acknowledged  in  all  of 
the  civilized  world,  and  both  of  the  contracting  parties  rec- 
ognized it. 

In  1804,  Congress  passed  an  act  organizing  the  ceded  pro- 
vince of  Louisiana  into  the  Territory  of  Orleans  and  the 
District  of  Louisiana,  the  former  to  embrace  all  of  the  terri- 
tory south  of  the  33rd  degree  of  latitude ;  the  latter  to  em- 
brace that  part  north  of  the  same  degree.  A  provision  was 
embraced  in  the  act  that  no  slaves  should  be  carried  into 
the  Territory  of  Orleans  or  the  District  of  Louisiana,  except 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


57 


from  some  part  of  the  United  States  by  citizens  removing 
thither  as  actual  settlers,  and  this  permission  was  not  to 
extend  to  negroes  brought  into  the  United  States  since  1793. 
This  was  a  direct  admission  of  the  right  of  the  people  to 
remove  into  the  territory  with  all  of  their  property,  includ- 
ing slaves,,  and  the  restriction  as  to  negroes  brought  into  the 
United  States  since  1798  was  in  consequence  of  the  fact 
that,  from  that  time  to  the  passage  of  the  act,  the  introduc- 
tion of  such  persons  was  prohibited  by  the  laws  of  all  of 
the  States,  showing  that  the  right  to  introduce  slaves  was 
regarded  as  resulting  under  the  constitution  from  the  rights 
under  the  laws  of  the  several  States  and  from  no  other. 

By  an  act  passed  at  the  same  session,  all  of  the  territory 
ceded  by  Georgia  was  included  in  the  territory  of  Missis- 
sippi. 

In  1805.  by  Act  of  Congress,  the  Territory  of  Orleans 
was  given  a  similar  government  to  that  of  Mississippi,  and 
the  District  of  Louisiana  was  made  a  territory  of  the  second 
class,  that  is  with  the  power  of  legislation  vested  in  the 
governor  and  .judges  of  the  territory.  Settlements  had  been 
previously  made  within  the  limits  of  the  District  of  Louis- 
iana on  the  Arkansas  River  and  within  the  present  limits 
of  Missouri,  and  slavery  had  been  carried  there  by  settlers 
from  the  slave  States.  The  act  organizing  the  territory  of 
Louisiana  provided  for  continuing  in  force  all  of  the  ex- 
isting laws  and  regulations  until  repealed  by  the  legisla- 
ture, and  thereby  gave  direct  recognition  of  the  system  of 
slavery,  as  it  had  not  only  been  protected  by  the  law  organ- 
izing the  District  of  Louisiana,  but  existed  by  operation 
of  the  old  French  and  Spanish  laws  still  in  force. 

In  1807,  at  the  second  session  of  the  9th  Congress,  on  the 
recommendation  of  ]\Ir.  Jefferson,  then  President,  an  act 
was  passed  for  the  prohibition  of  the  slave  trade  from 
foreign  countries  to  the  United  States,  to  take  effect  on  the 


58 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


1st  day  of  January,  1808.  Up  to  that  time  the  trade  had 
been  continued  by  English,  New  England,  and  New  York 
traders  to  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  by  evading  the  laws 
against  it,  when  such  were  in  force,  but  it  ceased  after  the 
United  States  law  went  into  effect ;  many  slaves  were  intro- 
duced into  the  port  of  Charleston  within  the  last  four  years 
prior  to  the  time  when  the  law  went  into  effect,  brought  in 
by  English  and  Northern  vessels. 

In  the  same  year  and  about  the  same  time  that  the  United 
States  law  was  passed,  under  the  brief  ministry  of  Lord 
Grenville,  the  Parliament  of  Great  Britain  passed  the  act 
to  abolish  the  trade  on  the  part  of  British  subjects,  though 
not  without  serious  opposition.  Among  the  opponents  of 
the  measure  was  another  Lord  Chancellor  of  England, 
Lord  Elden,  at  that  time  for  a  short  period  out  of  the 
office  which  he  had  held  for  many  years,  and  to  which  he 
returned  in  about  two  months  after  the  passage  of  the  bill 
to  continue  in  it  until  the  year  1827.  In  opposing  the  bill, 
Lord  Elden  said:  "I  do  not  believe  the  measure  now  pro- 
posed would  diminish  the  transport  of  negroes,  or  that  a 
single  individual  would  be  preserved  by  it,  at  the  same 
time,  that  it  would  be  utterly  destructive  of  the  British 
interests  involved  in  that  commerce."  He  asked  *'was  it 
right  because  there  was  a  change  of  men  and  of  public 
measures  in  consequence,  that  the  interests  of  those  who 
petitioned  against  the  bill  should  be  disregarded  and  what 
was  before  considered  fit  matter  of  enquiry  should  now  be 
rejected  as  immaterial  and  inapplicable?" 

In  the  argument  of  Wilberforce  and  others,  in  favor  of 
the  measure,  it  was  shown  that  there  had  never  been  any 
natural  increase  of  the  slaves  in  the  British  and  West  India 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


59 


Islands — the  excess  of  deaths  over  births  in  Jamaica  being 
as  follows: 

From  1698  to  1730,  3  1/2  per  cent. 
1730      1755,  2  1/2 
1755      1769,  1  3/4 
"     1769  "  1780,  3/5 
1780      1800,  1/24 

The  supply  had  therefore  been  kept  up  by  constant  im- 
portations to  meet  the  growing  demands  and  the  advocates 
of  the  measure  urged  the  following  reasons  for  its  adoption : 

''The  grand,  the  decisive  advantage  which  recommends 
the  abolition  of  the  slave  trade  is,  that  by  closing  the  supply 
of  foreign  negroes  to  which  the  planters  have  hitherto  been 
accustomed  to  trust  for  all  of  their  undertakings,  we  will 
compel  them  to  promote  the  multiplication  of  the  slaves 
on  their  estates ;  and  it  is  obvious  that  this  cannot  be  done 
without  improving  their  physical  and  moral  condition. 
Thus  not  only  will  the  inhuman  traffic  itself  be  prevented 
in  so  far  at  least  as  the  inhabitants  of  this  country  are 
concerned,  but  a  provision  will  be  made  for  the  progressive 
amelioration  of  the  black  population  in  the  West  Indies, 
and  that  too  on  the  securest  of  all  foundations,  the  interests 
and  selfish  desires  of  the  masters  in  whose  hands  they  are 
placed." 

It  seems  from  this  that  ''slave  breeding"  was  not  con- 
sidered a  crime  by  the  philanthropists  of  that  day  but  this 
discovery  was  reserved  for  those  of  a  later  time. 

Slavery  in  the  United  States  has  now  been  brought  down 
to  the  time  of  the  abolition  of  the  slave  trade  by  both  the 
United  States  and  Great  Britain,  and  it  will  be  seen  that 
the  former  government  had  no  jurisdiction  over  the  matter 
in  any  way,  except  to  give  protection  to  that  species  of 
property  in  the  states  where  it  existed,  in  the  same  way  that 


60 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


it  was  bound  to  protect  every  other  species  of  property 
within  the  scope  of  its  delegated  powers.  Slavery  existed 
in  the  states  prior  to  the  creation  of  the  government  and 
independent  of  it,  and  the  states  in  forming  that  govern- 
ment as  sovereign  states,  reserved  to  themselves  the  ex- 
clusive power  of  continuing  or  discontinuing  it  at  their 
option.  Not  only  was  this  so  with  regard  to  the  original 
states,  but  by  express  stipulation  with  the  states  of  North 
Carolina  and  Georgia  at  the  time  of  their  cession  of  terri- 
tory. Congress  had  bound  itself  not  to  interfere  with 
slavery  in  that  territory. 

Kentucky  had  been  formed  out  of  part  of  Virginia  and 
was  admitted  into  the  Union  upon  the  same  footing  as  that 
state,  and  by  the  treaty  with  France  upon  the  acquisition 
of  Louisiana,  the  faith  of  the  United  States  was  pledged 
to  respect  and  protect  the  right  of  property  in  slaves  within 
the  limits  of  the  acquired  territory  in  the  same  way  that 
it  was  pledged  to  respect  and  protect  the  right  of  property 
in  every  thing  else.  This  embraced  all  of  the  territory  within 
the  limits  of  the  United  States  except  the  northwestern 
territory,  and  to  that  the  prohibition  against  slavery  had 
been  extended  by  the  ordinance  of  1787,  prior  to  the  adop- 
tion of  the  Federal  Constitution.  The  validity  of  that 
ordinance  has  been  disputed,  and  certainly  if  it  had  any 
validity,  that  was  given  by  the  assent  of  Virginia  from 
whom  the  territory  was  acquired.  The  act  for  the  organ- 
ization of  the  government  of  the  Northwestern  territory 
recognized  the  validity  of  the  restriction  contained  in  the 
ordinance,  and  did  not  create  it. 

The  states  which  had  thought  proper  to  abolish  or  ex- 
clude slavery  because  it  was  not  to  their  interests  to  have 
it,  had  no  right  to  complain  of  its  existence  in  other  states. 
If  they  did  not  desire  to  be  allied  to  states  which  tolerated 
slavery,  then  they  should  have  refused  to  ratify  the  Consti- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


61 


tution.  Having  ratified  it,  the  faith  of  those  states  became 
pledged  by  every  consideration  that  can  bind  states  as 
communities,  or  men  as  individuals,  to  respect  the  institu- 
tions, rights  and  property  of  the  other  states  and  to  faith- 
fully abide  by  all  of  the  compromises  and  guaranties  of 
the  Constitution.  They  were  bound  to  respect  and  abide  by 
them  not  only  in  the  capacity  of  states,  but  they  were 
bound  by  the  exercise  of  their  just  powers  of  legislation  and 
restraint,  to  compel  their  citizens  to  respect  and  abide  by 
them.  This  obligation  extended  not  merely  to  abstaining 
from  all  violent  interference  and  active  measures  of  wrong, 
but  from  all  agitation  or  incitement  to  others  to  do  wrong, 
by  disturbing  the  peace,  property  or  rights  of  other  states 
and  the  citizens  thereof. 

The  Constitution  did  not  make  the  general  government 
censors  over  the  morals  or  domestic  institutions  of  the 
several  states,  nor  did  it  make  the  states  or  the  citizens 
thereof  censors  of  the  moral  or  domestic  institutions  of 
each  other.  It  was  merely  a  compact  formed  between 
sovereign  states  for  the  common  defence  and  protection  of 
each  other  in  their  rights  and  liberties,  as  they  existed 
before  its  formation. 


CHAPTER  IV 


Very  shortly  after  the  organization  of  the  government 
under  the  new  Constitution,  petitions  upon  the  subject  of 
the  slave  trade  began  to  be  presented  to  Congress,  mostly 
from  the  Quakers  of  Pennsylvania,  that  "non-resisting" 
sect  "conscientiously  opposed  to  all  war."  Some  of  the 
petitions  were  very  inflammatory  in  their  character,  and 
caused  much  excited  debate  in  the  early  Congresses,  and 
one  presented  by  Warren  Mifflin,  a  Quaker  of  Delaware, 
urging  the  injustice  of  slavery  and  the  necessity  for  its 
abolition,  was  returned  to  him  by  order  of  the  House  at  the 
second  session  of  the  second  Congress  on  account  of  its 
incendiary  and  mischievous  character. 

In  January,  1805,  the  first  proposition  for  the  abolition 
of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia  was  made.  It  was 
made  by  Sloan,  a  democratic  representative  from  New 
Jersey,  and  was  "that  all  children  born  after  the  ensuing 
4th  of  July  should  be  free  at  certain  ages,"  but  it  was  re- 
fused a  reference  to  a  committee  and  was  then  rejected  by 
a  vote  of  77  to  31.  It  is  a  little  remarkable  in  view  of 
subsequent  events  that  26  of  the  31  were  Northern  Demo- 
crats, and  that  only  5  constituting  the  rem^ainder  of  the 
vote  for  the  proposition  were  Northern  Federalists. 

After  the  passage  of  the  acts  in  the  United  States  and 
Great  Britain  abolishing  the  slave  trade,  the  agitation  on 
the  subject  of  slavery  abated  very  considerably  for  a  num- 
ber of  years,  only,  however,  to  be  revived  at  a  later  period 
in  a  more  virulent  form. 

In  the  year  1812,  the  state  of  Louisiana,  erected  out  of 
the  territory  of  Orleans,  was  admitted  into  the  Union  as  a 
slave  state,  and  that  part  of  the  territory  east  of  the  Pearl 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


63 


river  and  bordering  on  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  was  added  to 
the  territory  of  Mississippi.  The  name  of  Mississippi  was 
then  given  to  the  territory  of  Louisiana. 

In  1816,  Indiana  was  admitted  into  the  Union  as  a  free  * 
state,  and  in  1817,  Mississippi  was  admitted  as  a  slave 
state,  the  residue  of  the  territory  of  that  name  taking  the 
name  of  Alabama. 

In  1818,  Illinois  was  admitted  as  a  free  state  and  in  1819, 
Alabama  came  in  as  a  slave  state.  This  increase  of  the 
number  of  slave  states  did  not  increase  the  number  of 
slaves,  as  the  slaves  introduced  into  them  came  from  the 
older  slave  states.  If  any  slaves  were  introduced  from 
Africa  or  any  foreign  country,  it  was  by  such  evasion  of 
the  laws  as  will  take  place  under  any  government,  and  they 
were  not  so  introduced  to  any  appreciable  extent. 

In  1819,  towards  the  close  of  the  15th  Congress,  a  bill 
was  introduced  into  the  House  of  Representatives  to 
authorize  the  erection  of  the  state  of  Missouri  out  of  part 
of  the  territory  of  that  name,  and  on  motion  of  Tallmadge, 
of  New  York,  a  clause  was  inserted  in  the  bill  prohibiting 
the  further  introduction  of  slaves  and  granting  freedom  to 
the  afterborn  children  of  those  already  there,  on  arriving 
at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  the  proposition  being  carried  by 
a  vote  of  87  to  76.  This  proposed  restriction  caused  a  very 
excited  debate,  in  the  course  of  which  Cobb,  of  Georgia,  said 
that  ''a  fire  had  been  kindled  which  all  the  water  of  the 
ocean  could  not  put  out,  and  which  only  seas  of  blood  could 
extinguish;"  he  did  not  "hesitate  to  declare  that  if  the 
northern  members  persisted,  the  Union  would  be  dis- 
solved." The  bill,  however,  passed  the  House  with  the 
restriction,  but  in  the  Senate,  the  latter  was  stricken  out, 
the  clause  prohibiting  the  further  introduction  of  slaves 
by  a  vote  of  24  to  16,  and  the  one  freeing  the  children  by 
a  larger  vote,  there  being  only  7  votes  for  retaining  it.  The 


64 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


House  refused  to  concur  with  the  Senate  and  the  bill  was 
lost. 

At  the  same  time  the  Missouri  bill  was  introduced,  an- 
other bill  was  presented  for  establishing  Arkansas  territory 
out  of  that  part  of  the  Missouri  territory  south  of  36°  30', 
and  a  clause  was  inserted  into  it  granting  freedom!  to  all 
afterborn  children  of  slaves,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five,  but 
a  clause  prohibiting  the  further  introduction  of  slaves  was 
defeated  by  a  vote  of  70  to  71  and  the  clause  for  freeing 
the  children  of  those  already  in  the  territory  was  stricken 
out.  Taylor  of  New  York  then  proposed  to  add  a  proviso 
to  the  bill  that  neither  slavery  nor  involuntary  servitude 
should  exist  in  any  of  the  territories  of  the  United  States 
north  of  36°  30',  but  his  motion  was  defeated  and  the  bill 
for  organizing  Arkansas  Territory  passed  both  houses  with- 
out any  restriction. 

Before  the  meeting  of  the  next  Congress,  Massachusetts 
authorized  the  formation  of  the  District  of  Maine  into  a 
state  and  a  Constitution  was  adopted  by  the  people  in  that 
district  for  that  purpose.  In  the  meantime  there  was  much 
agitation  in  the  North  upon  the  subject  of  excluding 
slavery  from  the  territory  west  of  the  Mississippi.  Upon 
the  meeting  of  the  16th  Congress,  a  bill  was  introduced  to 
authorize  the  people  of  Missouri  to  frame  a  State  Constitu- 
tion, but  on  motion  of  Taylor,  the  author  of  the  proposed 
proviso  excluding  slavery  from  the  territories  north  of 
36°  30',  a  committee  was  appointed  to  consider  the  sub- 
ject of  prohibiting  slavery  west  of  the  Mississippi,  and  the 
Missouri  bill  was  postponed  to  await  the  action  of  the  com- 
mittee. 

A  bill  had  been  introduced  for  the  admission  of  Maine — 
and  after  the  defeat  of  a  motion  to  postpone  it  until  the 
Missouri  bill  came  up — was  passed.  When  this  bill  came 
up  in  the  Senate,  a  clause  for  the  admission  of  Missouri, 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


65 


was  attached  to  it,  after  the  defeat  of  a  motion  to  insert  in 
the  latter  a  proviso  for  the  prohibition  of  slavery,  and 
Thomas,  a  senator  from  Illinois,  then  proposed  an  amend- 
ment prohibiting  the  introduction  of  slavery  into  any  of 
the  remaining  territory  north  of  36°  30',  which  was  adopted 
by  a  vote  of  34  to  10;  the  senators  from  Virginia,  South 
Carolina,  Georgia,  Indiana,  and  one  senator  from  North 
Carolina  and  Mississippi  each  voting  in  the  negative.  The 
biU  was  then  passed  by  a  vote  of  24  to  20,  all  the  senators 
from  the  slave  states  and  the  two  from  Illinois  voting  in 
the  affirmative,  and  those  voting  in  the  negative  being  from 
the  free  states. 

The  House  refused  to  concur  in  the  Senate's  amend- 
ment, and  the  Senate  adhered,  therefore  a  committee  of 
conference  was  appointed.  In  the  meantime,  the  House  had 
been  debating  the  IMissouri  bill,  and  pending  the  conference 
it  was  passed  by  a  vote  of  93  to  84  with  a  clause  prohibiting 
the  further  introduction  of  slaves.  When  this  bill  went  to 
the  Senate,  the  prohibition  was  stricken  out  and  the 
Thomas  proviso  attached,  and  it  was  then  passed  and  re- 
turned to  the  House.  The  Committee  of  Conference  at 
the  same  time  reported  recommending  that  the  Senate  re- 
cede from  ita  amendment  to  the  Maine  bill  and  that  the 
House  pass  the  Missouri  bill  as  amended  by  the  Senate. 
The  House  agreed  to  the  amendment  to  the  Missouri  bill, 
striking  out  the  clause  for  prohibiting  slavery,  by  a  vote 
of  90  to  87,  and  to  that  inserting  the  Thomas  proviso,  by 
a  vote  of  134  to  42,  35  of  the  latter  being  Southern  members 
who  objected  to  the  proviso  as  unconstitutional,  and  5  being 
Northern  men  who  objected  because  it  did  not  go  far 
enough.  The  Senate  receded  from  its  amendment  to  the 
Maine  bill  and  both  bills  were  thus  passed. 

President  Monroe  signed  the  IMissouri  bill  after  much 
hesitation,  upon  having  his  scruples  as  to  the  constitution- 


66 


THI  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


ality  of  the  proviso  removed,  and  upon  being  assured  that 
the  restriction  as  to  the  territories  extended  to  theni  only 
while  in  the  territorial  condition. 

The  bill  in  relation  to  Maine  admitted  that  state  into 
the  Union  at  once,  but  that  in  regard  to  Missouri  was  a 
mere  act  enabling  the  people  to  frame  a  Constitution,  and 
a  joint  resolution  for  the  admission  of  the  state  after  the 
formation  of  the  Constitution  was  still  necessary. 

"When  the  Constitution  was  presented  at  the  next  session 
of  Congress,  it  was  found  to  contain  a  clause  requiring  the 
legislature  to  pass  laws  to  prevent  free  persons  of  color 
from  settling  in  the  state,  and  as  the  admission  of  Maine 
was  complete,  the  Northern  members  took  occasion  to  ob- 
ject to  the  admission  of  Missouri  because  of  this  clause, 
though  Ohio  and  Indiana  had  passed  laws  forbidding  the 
settling  of  free  persons  of  color  in  those  states,  and  there 
was  an  old  law  of  Massachusetts  to  the  same  effect,  still  un- 
repealed. A  resolution  offered  in  the  House  for  the  ad- 
mission of  Missouri,  with  its  Constitution  as  it  stood,  was 
defeated  by  a  vote  of  78  to  93,  those  voting  in  the  negative 
being  Northern  members.  After  much  discussion  and  ex- 
citement and  the  defeat  in  the  House  of  an  effort  to  compro- 
mise the  question,  on  motion  of  Mr.  Clay,  a  joint  committee 
was  appointed  to  take  the  subject  into  consideration,  and 
this  committee  reported  a  joint  resolution  for  the  admission 
of  Missouri,  after  the  state  legislature  should  have  given  a 
solemn  pledge,  that  the  Constitution  should  not  be  con- 
strued to  authorize  any  act  and  that  no  act  should  be  passed 
"by  which  any  of  the  citizens  of  either  of  the  states  should 
be  excluded  from  the  enjoyment  of  any  of  the  privileges 
and  immunities  to  which  they  are  entitled  under  the  Con- 
stitution of  the  United  States.''  The  President  being 
authorized  to  announce  by  proclamation,  the  adoption  of 
the  pledge,  and  Missouri  then  to  become  a  state  in  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


67 


Union,  this  resolution  "^as  adopted,  the  vote  being  86  to  52 
in  the  House,  all  the  votes  in  the  negative,  excepting  four, 
being  given  by  Northern  members  and  the  four  Southern 
members  not  being  willing  to  submit  to  the  concession. 
Since  the  rejection  of  the  proposition  for  compromise  in 
the  House  on  the  same  basis,  news  had  been  received  of  the 
final  ratification  by  Spain  of  the  treaty  for  the  cession  of 
Florida,  and  as.  by  that  treaty  the  United  States  relin- 
quished all  claim  to  Texas,  thus  reducing  the  whole  of  the 
territory  south  of  36^  30'  and  west  of  the  I\Iississippi  to  the 
Territory  of  Arkansas,  comprising  the  present  state  of 
Arkausas  and  the  small  tract  of  Indian  country  west  of  it, 
while  there  remained  an  immense  domain  north  of  that 
parallel,  stretching  across  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the 
Pacific,  a  few  Northern  members  were  induced  to  cast  their 
votes  for  the  last  proposition,  thus  securing  its  passage. 

The  required  pledge  was  given  by  the  legislature  of  Mis- 
souri, and  that  state  was  thus  admitted  into  the  Union  in 
1821.  For  a  long  time,  the  arrangement  by  which  the  pas- 
sage of  the  enabling  act  for  ]\Iissouri  was  secured,  was 
called  compromise,  and  the  line  of  36"  30'  was  called  ''The 
Missouri  Compromise  Line."'  The  subject  was  fully  ex- 
plained by  Mr.  Clay  in  the  Senate  in  1850,  and  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  arrangement  was  no  compromise  at  all,  but 
was  merely  one  of  those  legislative  expedients  often 
adopted  to  secure  the  passage  of  a  measure.  As  it  passed, 
the  restriction  was  merely  a  legislative  enactment,  liable 
to  repeal  at  any  time  like  any  other  law.  But  few  of  the 
Northern  members  agreed  to  the  arrangement,  and  at  the 
very  next  session  of  Congress,  the  great  mass  of  them  re- 
pudiated the  idea  of  its  being  a  compromise  by  voting 
against  the  admission  of  Missouri,  upon  a  mere  pretext. 

The  only  compromise  made  at  all  was  that  made  with  the 
state  of  Missouri  about  the  construction  of  her  Constitution. 


68 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


Nevertheless,  the  Southern  States  were  always  to  regard 
this  legislative  adoption  of  the  line  36°  30'  as  a  settlement 
of  the  question  of  slavery  in  the  territories,  provided  it  was 
adhered  to  as  such  in  principle  and  spirit,  but  it  was  not 
accepted  by  the  Northern  people  in  that  light  and  was  made 
by  them  the  ground-work  for  new  demands  and  encroach- 
ments. 

The  proposition  for  the  prohibition  of  slavery  in  the 
territories,  was  not  one  in  favor  of  the  freedom  of  the 
slaves  themselves,  as  their  introduction  into  those  territories 
would  not  increase  the  number  of  slaves,  but  would  ex- 
pand them  on  a  wider  sphere,  thus  rendering  it  easier  to 
adopt  measures  for  emancipation,  at  least  in  some  of  the 
states  if  that  was  desirable,  and  making  the  condition  of 
the  slaves  more  comfortable  if  emancipation  did  not  take 
place;  while  the  restriction  of  the  institution  to  the  states 
where  it  existed,  would  forever  close  the  door  on  any  steps 
for  its  voluntary  abolition  and  render  the  condition  of  the 
slaves  much  less  desirable.  Diffusion  was  much  the  best 
policy  for  both  masters  and  slaves,  and  the  opposition  to 
the  introduction  of  the  latter  into  the  territories  was  only 
a  political  manoeuvre  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  a  sec- 
tional preponderance  of  power,  and  in  all  of  the  debates, 
the  views  expressed  by  the  advocates  of  the  restriction 
tended  to  the  furtherance  of  that  object. 

By  the  final  ratification  of  the  treaty  between  the  United 
States  and  Spain  in  the  year  1821,  Florida  became  a  terri- 
tory of  the  United  States  and  a  territorial  government  was 
soon  formed  therefor. 

After  the  admission  of  Missouri  into  the  Union,  there 
was  a  subsidence  in  the  agitation  upon  the  subject  of 
slavery  for  a  number  of  years,  though  every  now  and  then 
a  petition  from  some  Quaker  meeting  was  received  and 
quietly  disposed  of. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


69 


In  the  year  1834,  the  British  Parliament  passed  an  act 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  British  West  Indies,  her 
colonies  in  those  islands  being  all  of  the  slave  colonies  left 
to  Great  Britain.  These  colonies  had  dwindled  into  insigni- 
ficance and  formed  but  a  very  inconsiderable  part  of  her 
gigantic  colonial  system.  Canada,  Australia,  New  Zealand 
and  her  possessions  in  the  East  Indies  furnished  an  ample 
field  for  British  settlement  and  colonial  trade,  "which 
dwarfed  into  very  diminutive  proportions  the  British  in- 
terests in  the  West  Indies.  Great  Britain  could  therefore 
afford  to  be  philanthropic  and  at  the  cost  of  £20,000,000 
(about  $96,000,000)  she  gave  liberty  to  a  very  few  more 
than  600,000  slaves,  who  were  placed  in  a  condition  of  ap- 
prenticeship for  several  years  to  enable  the  planters  to  ac- 
commodate themselves  to  the  new  order  of  things  by  de- 
grees. She  had  abandoned  the  slave  trade  after,  by  the 
loss  of  the  American  colonies,  she  had  ceased  to  have  a 
large  interest  in  the  subject  of  slavery,  and  this  grant  of 
£20,000,000  for  the  freedom  of  all  of  the  negro  slaves  left 
in  her  dominions,  was  the  final  atonement  she  made  for  the 
millions  she  had  consigned  to  slavery,  and  the  millions  who 
had  been  cast  overboard,  to  meet  a  watery  grave,  on  their 
route  to  slavery. 

To  make  her  own  gracious  act  more  conspicuous,  she 
turned  propagandist  and  commenced  denouncing  the 
system  of  slavery  which  she  had  been  so  instrumental  in 
fixing  upon  the  world,  as  un-Christian,  inhuman  and  bar- 
barous. Having,  as  she  considered,  cast  the  beam  out  of 
her  own  eye,  she  could  see  more  distinctly  the  moat  in  that 
of  others,  but  she  made  no  restitution  of  the  hundreds  of 
millions  she  derived  from  the  profits  of  the  inhuman  traffic 
as  she  now  styled  it,  and  which  had  assisted  in  building  up 
her  marine,  manufactures  and  commerce.  Having  thus 
washed  her  hands  of  the  sin,  as  she  imagined,  she  became 


70 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


most  intolerant  in  her  opinions  and  denunciations  of  those 
upon  whom  she  had  entailed  the  institution  of  slavery  by 
her  avarice  and  power,  furnishing  another  example  of  those, 

**Who  compound  for  sins  they  're  inclined  to, 
By  damning  those  they  have  no  mind  to. '  * 

Emissaries  soon  came  out  from  Great  Britain  to  the 
United  States  and  began  the  agitation  of  the  abolition  of 
slavery  there.  The  preponderance  of  women  in  the  New 
England  States  caused  them  to  be  selected  as  proselytes 
for  the  new  crusade.  There  was  also  a  class  of  men  in 
that  section,  offshoots  of  the  old  persecuting  theocracy  who 
furnished  recruits  to  the  agitators.  There  were  doubtless 
many  who  really  believed  slavery  to  be  a  great  sin  and 
wrong,  who  joined  in  the  crusade  from  conscientious  mo- 
tives. Knaves  there  were  in  plentiful  supply,  gowned 
and  ungowned,  who  were  ready  for  anything  which  would 
tend  to  their  personal  advancement  in  position  or  their 
pecuniary  profit.  Out  of  these  materials  abolition  societies 
were  formed  and  petitions  began  to  pour  into  Congress  for 
the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia  and 
other  places  within  the  Federal  jurisdiction,  while  the  mails 
were  filled  with  incendiary  publications  calculated  to  stir 
up  insurrections.  John  Quincy  Adams,  who  had  held 
political  office  from  his  earliest  manhood,  until  he  became 
President,  obtained  a  return  to  political  life  by  his  election 
to  the  lower  House  of  Congress.  Shortly  after  his  return 
there,  in  presenting  one  of  the  chronic  petitions  of  the 
Quakers  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  District  of 
Columbia,  he  had  taken  occasion  to  notify  the  House  and 
the  country  that  he  had  no  sympathy  with  the  views  of  the 
politicians,  yet  he  joined  the  new  agitators. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


71 


This  new  agitation  in  Congress  began  about  1834-5  and 
was  continued  with  great  violence  for  several  years,  a  peti- 
tion being  presented  by  Mr.  Adams,  during  the  time,  for 
the  dissolution  of  the  Union.  After  much  exasperation  of 
feeling  growing  out  of  the  presentation  of  the  petitions  in 
both  Houses  of  Congress  and  the  circulation  of  incendiary 
publications,  some  respite  from  the  excitement  in  Congress 
was  obtained  by  the  adoption  of  a  rule  in  the  lower  House 
for  laying  petitions  on  the  table  on  their  presentation,  with- 
out debate,  and  by  the  conservative  action  of  the  Senate. 
The  agitation,  however  was  continued  at  the  North  and 
began  to  have  an  important  influence  upon  the  canvass  for 
the  presidential  elections.  The  law  for  the  recovery  of 
fugitive  slaves,  always  inefficient  because  of  the  refusal  or 
failure  of  the  states'  officers  to  enforce  it,  had  now  become 
a  dead  letter  by  the  resistance  to  its  execution  by  mobs  and 
the  still  more  mischievous  action  of  several  of  the  legis- 
latures of  the  free  states.  The  circulation  of  incendiary 
publications  through  the  mails  had  been  forbidden  by  Con- 
gress, but  the  Northern  press  was  prolific  in  the  production 
of  gross  libels  upon  the  character  of  the  people  of  the 
Southern  states  and  misrepresentations  of  the  institution  of 
slavery  as  it  existed  there;  even  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  was  denounced  by  the  new  lights  as  "  a  league 
with  hell  and  a  covenant  with  death. ' ' 

Arkansas  had  been  admitted  as  a  slave  state  in  the  year 
1836  and  Michigan  as  a  free  state  in  1837;  and,  in  1845 
Florida  was  admitted  as  a  slave  state,  the  same  act  provid- 
ing for  the  admission  of  Iowa,  which  was  a  free  state,  but 
did  not  come  in  until  1846. 

On  the  29th  of  December,  the  independent  Republic  of 
Texas  was  admitted  into  the  Union  as  a  state,  and  came  in 
with  slavery  already  established  there.  This  admission,  or 
annexation  as  it  was  called,  of  Texas,  resulted  in  the  war 


72 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


with  Mexico  and  the  establishment,  at  the  close  of  the  war 
in  1848,  of  the  Rio  Grande  as  the  southern  boundary  of 
Texas  and  the  acquisition  of  the  provinces  or  territories  of 
New  Mexico  and  upper  California  as  United  States  ter- 
ritory. 

The  admission  of  Texas  gave  a  new  impulse  to  the  anti- 
slavery  agitation,  and  the  acquisition,  by  the  war,  of  the 
new  territory  brought  it  again  prominently  before  Con- 
gress. Even  before  the  close  of  the  war  with  Mexico,  the 
old  proposition  for  the  exclusion  of  slavery  from  the  public 
territories  was  revived,  with  a  view  to  its  application  to  any 
territory  that  might  be  acquired  as  a  result  of  the  war,  and 
it  was  then  designated  as  the  ''Wilmot  Proviso"  from  the 
name  of  the  member  re-introducing  it.  On  all  propositions 
to  establish  governments  of  the  newly  acquired  territory, 
after  the  close  of  the  war,  the  "Wilmot  Proviso"  was 
pressed  with  great  vehemence  by  Northern  politicians,  and 
was  strenuously  resisted  by  those  of  the  South. 

The  most  extreme  of  the  Southern  politicians  were  will- 
ing to  extend  the  so-called  Missouri  Compromise  line  of 
36°  30'  to  the  Pacific  ocean,  and  regard  it  as  a  final  settle- 
ment of  the  question,  but  the  Northern  advocates  of  the 
proviso  would  listen  to  no  terms  for  an  adjustment,  and 
thus  again  repudiated  the  principle  and  spirit  of  the  settle- 
ment made  by  the  Missouri  bill.  Southern  statesmen,  while 
willing  to  accept  the  line  of  36°  30'  for  the  sake  of  peace, 
did  not  claim  the  right  to  foster  slavery  even  upon  the  ter- 
ritory south  of  that  line,  by  the  action  of  Congress,  but  they 
claimed  that  the  question  should  be  left  where  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  United  States  left  it,  that  is,  that  the  people 
settling  in  the  territories  should  be  allowed  freedom  to 
adopt  their  own  institutions  when  they  came  to  form  state 
governments,  and  that  Congress  in  the  meantime  should 
adopt  no  measures  to  forestall  their  action.    They  urged 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


73 


that  the  territory  was  acquired  by  the  common  blood  and 
treasure,  and  that  Congress,  therefore,  in  its  action,  should 
not  give  preference  to  one  section  over  another  and  thus 
virtually  exclude  the  people  of  the  South  from  the  newly 
acquired  domain.  This  was  a  reasonable  and  just  view  of 
the  subject,  and  did  not  look  to  the  increase  of  the  number 
of  slaves,  but  merely  to  their  expansion  over  a  wider  area, 
and  the  older  states  from  the  rapidly  increasing  slave  popu- 
lation. Nor  was  the  proposition  to  exclude  slavery  ever  in  ; 
the  interest  of  freedom,  for  it  sought  merely  to  confine 
slavery  to  the  country  where  it  already  existed,  and  thus 
surround  the  slave  states  with  a  cordon  of  free  states,  so  as 
to  increase  year  by  year,  the  difficulties  of  prospective  eman- 
cipation, and  render  any  but  a  subversion  of  the  institution 
by  violence  an  impossibility.  It  was  as  injurious  to  the 
slaves  themselves  as  to  the  white  population  of  the  states. 

Had  the  would-be  philanthropists  been  governed  by  an 
enlightened  regard  for  the  welfare  or  freedom  of  the  slaves, 
they  would  not  have  objected  to  their  introduction,  either 
into  the  territory  north  of  36°  30'  or  that  acquired  from 
Mexico,  for  with  the  greater  eagerness  existing  at  the 
North  for  emigration,  as  well  as  that  from  foreign  countries 
and  the  want  of  adaptation  of  the  soil  and  climate  of  the 
greater  part  of  the  territory,  old  and  new,  to  the  staples  in 
the  production  of  which  slave  labor  could  be  profitably  em- 
ployed, it  was  certain  that  much  the  larger  population 
?ettlirjg  in  that  territory  would  be  from  the  free  states  and 
foreign  countries,  and  it  was  eaually  certain  that,  when  the 
people  came  to  form  new  states,  slavery  would  be  prohibited 
and  freedom  given  to  the  slaves  within  the  limits  of  most, 
if  not  all  of  those  states. 

But  fanaticism  of  no  kind,  whether  political  or  religious, 
listens  to  reason,  and  among  the  pseudo-philanthropists 
there  was  much  of  the  leaven  of  that  old  spirit,  which  had 


74 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


prompted  the  hanging,  burning  and  scourging  of  heretics 
and  witches." 

There  were  many  politicians  by  trade,  whose  aspirations 
had  been  unsuccessful  and  who  cared  nothing  for  the  negro 
or  the  cause  of  freedom,  but  who  fell  in  with  the  "free- 
soil"  movement,  as  it  was  called  with  the  selfish  hope  of 
building  up  a  great  sectional  party  under  the  auspices  of 
which  they  could  obtain  and  retain  that  power  which  they 
had  failed  to  acquire  otherwise.  A  very  large  mass  of  men 
rarely  think  for  themselves  and  among  this  class  the  leaders 
of  the  ''free-soil"  operated  extensively  by  impassioned  ap- 
peals to  their  prejudices  and  passions,  inducing  them  to  be- 
lieve that  their  vital  interests  required  that  slavery  should 
be  excluded  by  law  from  the  territories.  One  of  the  shrewd- 
est and  most  far-seeing  of  the  ' '  free-soil ' '  leaders  boldly  de- 
clared that  there  was  a  "higher  law"  than  the  Constitution 
and  that  there  was  "an  impassaMe  conflict  between  slavery 
and  freedom." 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  there  were  extreme  men  at  the 
South  on  the  other  side,  but  they  were  made  so  mostly  by 
the  hostile  attitude  assumed  by  their  opponents. 

The  result  of  the  agitation  was  that  for  some  time  no 
government  could  be  formed  for  any  part  of  the  new  ter- 
ritory. The  exasperation  of  feeling  between  the  two  sec- 
tions of  the  Union,  and  the  danger  to  that  Union  itself,  be- 
came so  great  that  in  1850  the  more  moderate  of  the  leading 
statesmen  of  the  country,  with  Clay  and  Webster  at  their 
head,  devoted  themselves  to  the  adjustment  of  the  threaten- 
ing questions  and  their  efforts  resulted  in  the  adoption  of 
certain  measures  commonly  called  the  "Compromise  Meas- 
ures of  1850."  These  measures  consisted  of  a  bill  for  the 
admission  of  California  into  the  Union,  under  a  constitu- 
tion excluding  slavery,  which  had  been  irregularly  adopted 
a  bill  to  establish  a  territorial  government  for  Utah  and  a 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


75 


bill  to  establish  the  northern  and  western  boundaries  of 
Texas  with  her  assent,  and  to  establish  a  territorial  govern- 
ment for  New  Mexico,  it  being  provided  in  the  territorial 
bills  that  states  created  out  of  the  two  territories  organized 
when  the  population  should  be  sufficient,  should  be  admitted 
into  the  Union  with  or  without  slavery,  as  the  people  them- 
selves might  decide. 

Along  with  these  bills  another  was  passed  for  enforcing 
the  provision  of  the  Constitution  in  regard  to  the  return  of 
fugitive  slaves,  as  the  former  one  could  not  be  executed 
because  most  of  the  free  states  had  prohibited  their  officers 
from  acting  under  it.  These  measures  as  a  whole  were  not 
acceptable  to  the  extreme  men  of  either  section,  but  the 
more  moderate  portion  of  the  two  leading  political  parties 
hoped  that  they  would  put  an  end  to  the  agitation  and  re- 
store peace  and  concord  to  the  country.  Such  appeared  to 
be  their  first  effect,  and  both  of  the  great  political  parties, 
into  which  the  country  had  been  divided,  without  reference 
to  sections  for  many  years — Democrat  and  Whig — in  their 
platforms  of  principles  adopted  in  the  canvass  for  Presi- 
dent in  1852,  gave  their  adhesion  to  the  ''Compromise 
Measures  of  1850"  as  a  final  settlement  of  the  questions 
embraced  by  them. 

In  1848,  a  portion  of  the  * '  f ree-soilers "  had  run  Martin 
Van  Buren,  a  former  President  and  a  defeated  candidate 
for  the  Democratic  nomination,  as  their  candidate  for  the 
Presidency,  but  the  party  did  not  have  cohesiveness  enough 
to  give  him  its  whole  vote,  and  in  1852  the  ''free-soil" 
party  had  no  candidate,  the  members  of  it  voting  with  the 
parties  to  which  they  had  previously  been  attached  accord- 
ing to  their  predilections,  though  there  was  still  much 
muttering  by  the  leaders. 

The  abolition  party  proper,  however,  had  a  candidate  for 
form's  sake. 


76 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


In  1848,  Wisconsin  had  been  added  to  the  Union  as  a 
free  state,  and  there  were  now  in  the  Union  sixteen  free 
states  and  fifteen  slave  states,  giving  to  the  free  states  the 
preponderance  in  the  Senate,  as  they  had  long  had  in  the 
lower  House.  Neither  Utah  nor  New  Mexico  was  fitted  at 
all  for  slave  labor,  and  there  was  no  territory  out  of  which 
it  was  likely  that  another  slave  state  could  be  formed,  ex- 
cept by  the  sub-division  of  Texas,  while  there  was  a  prospect 
for  the  formation  of  several  more  free  states,  at  no  distant 
day,  out  of  the  territory  west  of  the  Mississippi  and  north 
of  36°  30'  and  on  the  Pacific  coast,  the  territories  of  Min- 
nesota and  Oregon  having  already  been  organized. 

By  what  was  called  the  Compromise  of  1850,  the  South 
had  gained  nothing  whatever,  except  the  abstract  principle 
inserted  in  the  Utah  and  New  Mexico  bills,  of  non-inter- 
ference by  Congress  with  the  question  of  slavery  and  the 
submission  of  the  decision  of  the  question  to  the  people  of 
the  territories  when  they  came  to  frame  their  state  govern- 
ments, while  the  North  had  gained  the  rich  and  growing 
state  of  California.  The  bill  for  the  restoration  of  fugitive 
slaves  was  in  accordance  with  an  express  stipulation  in  the 
Constitution,  without  which  it  would  never  have  been 
adopted.  Yet  the  execution  of  this  law  was  resisted  from 
the  very  beginning  and  very  soon  most  of  the  free  states 
passed  laws,  called  * '  personal  liberty  bills ' '  which  virtually 
nullified  the  act  of  Congress.  Several  collisions  ensued  be- 
tween the  United  States  officers  in  their  efforts  to  execute 
the  law  and  mobs  in  the  free  states  who  resisted  its  execu- 
tion, and  even  members  on  the  floor  of  Congress  denounced 
the  law  and  counselled  resistance  to  it.  This  served  to  pre- 
vent that  harmonious  feeling  which  had  been  expected  from 
the  adoption  of  the  measures  of  adjustment,  and  the  new 
fugitive  slave  act  became  soon  a  dead  letter  from  the 
danger,  difficulty  and  expense  attending  its  execution.  Not 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


77 


only  was  the  ^aranty  contained  in  the  Constitution,  and 
the  act  of  Congress  to  enforce  it,  thus  rendered  nugatory, 
but  for  many  years  slaves  had  been  enticed  by  agents  from 
the  North  to  make  their  escape  and  aid  had  been  furnished 
them  while  doing  so,  under  a  system  which  obtained  the 
designation  of  *  *  The  underground  railroad. ' '  This  was  not 
confined  to  citizens  merely  but  was  participated  in  by  state 
officers  who  were  sworn  to  support  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  and  instead  of  compelling  their  citizens  and 
officers  to  comply  with  the  Constitution  and  law,  many  of 
the  free  states  passed  laws  to  make  it  felony  for  the  owner 
to  arrest  his  slave  or  for  any  one  to  assist  him. 

At  the  session  of  Congress  for  1853-54  in  the  introduction 
of  a  bill  for  the  establishment  of  governments  for  the  ter- 
ritories of  Kansas  and  Nebraska,  both  north  of  36°  30',  a 
proposition  was  made  by  Mr.  Douglas,  a  senator  from  Illi- 
nois, to  incorporate  a  provision  in  regard  to  slavery  similar 
to  that  contained  in  the  Utah  and  New  Mexico  bills.  "When 
the  measure  was  offered  by  a  Northern  man,  it  was  sup- 
ported by  nearly  all  of  the  Southern  representatives  as  cor- 
rect in  principle,  though  it  met  with  the  opposition  of  a 
few  Southern  representatives  and  statesmen,  who  de- 
precated it  as  tending  to  arouse  again  the  excitement  which 
had  partially- subsided. 

The  question  was  not  one  of  any  great  practical  import- 
ance, as  the  climate  and  soil  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska  fur- 
nished a  more  formidable  barrier  to  the  introduction  of 
slaves  than  any  legal  enactment.  The  proposition  to  repeal 
the  enactment  as  to  the  line  of  36°  30'  violated  no  com- 
promise, as  has  been  shown,  and  it  violated  no  right  of  any 
of  the  Northern  states  or  people,  but  merely  asserted  a 
principle  deducible  from  the  Constitution  and  right  in  it- 
self ;  though  in  this  case  it  was  an  abstract  one. 


78 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


The  measure  was  passed  with  the  assistance  of  some  of 
the  Northern  Democrats,  and  it  had  the  effect  so  much 
dreaded  by  the  conservative  men  who  opposed  it,  of  reviv- 
ing with  new  intensity  the  fires  of  the  former  agitation 
and  of  giving  new  life  to  the  languishing  free-soil  or  Re- 
publican party.  Though  they  had  never  acceded  to  or  com- 
plied with  the  compromise  in  regard  to  Missouri  or  that  of 
1850,  or  even  those  of  the  Constitution  itself,  the  leaders  of 
the  free-soil  party  raised  a  tremendous  clamor  about  the 
violation  of  plighted  faith,  and  soon  the  agitation  spread 
over  the  whole  North  with  ten  fold  force. 

The  Puritan  ministers  of  New  England,  successors  of 
the  Cotton-Mathers  of  religious  persecution  and  witches- 
killing  notoriety,  abandoned  the  gospel  of  peace  for  dis- 
sertations upon  the  merits  of  Sharp 's  rifles,  and  under  their 
auspices  a  considerable  number  of  armed  emigrants  were 
sent  to  Kansas.  In  consequence  of  this  movement  some  hot 
heads  from  the  South  imprudently  went  to  Kansas  for  the 
purpose  of  disputing  the  settlement  of  that  territory  with 
the  emissaries  of  the  New  England  parsons.  The  result  was 
that  a  very  disorderly  condition  of  things  ensued  in  the 
new  territories,  as  is  always  the  case  where  reason  gives 
way  to  passion.  Many  wrongs  and  acts  of  violence  were 
committed  on  both  sides  and  there  was  a  tremendous  howl 
about  ''bleeding  Kansas*'  by  the  Northern  parsons  and 
agitators,  but  not  one  slave  was  carried  into  Kansas  and 
no  one  thought  of  carrying  any  there. 

The  result  of  the  agitation  consequent  on  the  theoretic 
extension  of  slavery  to  Kansas  and  Nebraska,  and  of  the 
troubles  in  Kansas,  was  the  appearance  of  John  C.  Fre- 
mont as  the  Eepublican  free-soil  candidate  for  the  presi- 
dency in  1856.  He  was  beaten,  but  his  vote  showed  the 
existence  of  a  formidable  sectional  party,  in  all  of  the  free 
states,  based  on  a  solitary  idea.   The  strength  of  this  party 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


79 


Tvas  still  further  increased  by  an  attempt  to  secure  the  ad- 
mission of  Kansas  into  the  Union,  under  a  Constitution 
liberating  slavery  and  adopted  by  a  convention  held  during 
the  prevalence  of  the  bitter  feud  there,  but  the  most  im- 
portant result  of  the  Kansas  troubles  was  the  development 
of  the  character  of  John  Bro^vn,  a  bold,  desperate  and 
fanatical  Northern  man,  who  made  his  appearance  on  the 
scene  of  action,  and  participated  largely  in  the  outrages 
committed  by  the  free-soilers  and  abolitionists. 

What  gave  the  crowning  stroke  to  the  already  over-heated 
animosity  between  the  two  sections,  was  the  appearance  of 
John  Bro^vn  on  a  new  theatre  of  action.  The  political  par- 
sons and  the  agitators  of  the  North  did  not  confine  them- 
selves to  the  denunciation  of  the  Southern  people  and  of 
slavery,  but  they  lavished  their  anathemas  upon  the  Consti- 
tution which  tolerated  slavery  and  the  Union  which  gave  it, 
as  they  alleged,  protection.  Nor  were  the  denunciations 
confined  to  Northern  pulpits  and  abolition  or  free-soil 
papers,  but  were  heard  in  the  Senate  Chamber  and  on  the 
floor  of  the  House  of  Eepresentatives,  and  were  accom- 
panied with  the  most  atrocious  libels  on  the  Southern 
people,  in  which  they  were  represented  as  barbarians  who 
delighted  in  inflicting  upon  their  slaves  the  most  revolting 
cruelties,  and  who  engaged  in  the  most  debasing  immorali- 
ties. Encouraged  by  these  open  denunciations  of  the  Con- 
stitution and  the  Union,  and  stimulated  by  the  picture  of 
Southern  wrongs  and  cruelty  to  the  slaves,  which  were  con- 
stantly placed  before  his  eyes.  John  Brown  gave  way  to 
the  wild  conceptions  of  a  fanatical  mind  and  undertook  to 
subvert  the  government  of  the  United  States  and  to  redress 
the  wrongs  of  the  slaves  by  deluging  the  Southern  states 
in  blood. 

In  the  year  1858.  he  held  a  secret  meeting  or  convention 
of  reckless  fanatics  like  himself  at  Chatham,  in  Canada 


80 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


West,  and  devised  a  scheme  for  a  provisional  government 
of  the  United  States,  of  which  he  was  to  he  the  head,  with 
a  cabinet  appointed  by  himself,  and  he  concocted  a  plan  for 
putting  his  government  in  operation  by  raising  a  rebellion 
among  the  slaves  and  freeing  them.  All  of  these  proceedings 
were  kept  from  the  public  until  the  month  of  October,  1859, 
when  John  Brown,  with  a  band  of  followers,  made  his  ap- 
pearance suddenly  at  Harper's  Ferry,  within  the  limits  of 
Virginia,  surprised  and  captured  the  United  States  arsenal 
at  that  place,  which  was  without  a  guard;  killed  several 
citizens ;  captured  and  imprisoned  others,  and  committed  a 
number  of  depredations  and  robberies  in  the  neighborhood. 
His  pretended  provisional  government  was  proclaimed  and 
the  object  of  the  movement  declared,  but  failing  to  receive 
some  expected  re-inforcements,  and  not  meeting  with  co- 
operation on  the  part  of  the  slaves  for  whom  he  brought  a 
supply  of  arms  and  expected  to  get  others  from  the  arsenal, 
he  and  his  band  of  desperadoes  were  soon  surrounded  and 
the  greater  part  captured  or  killed.  John  Brown  himself 
was  made  a  prisoner  in  a  wounded  condition  and  he  and 
several  of  his  followers  were  tried  under  the  laws  of  Vir- 
ginia, convicted  and  executed  for  treason  and  murder. 

His  plan  of  operations  contemplated  a  servile  insurrection 
in  all  of  the  Southern  states  with  all  of  the  horrors  of  blood 
and  rapine,  and  his  acts  amounted  to  treason,  not  only 
against  the  state  of  Virginia,  but  against  the  United  States ; 
yet  there  was  reason  to  suspect  that  some  of  the  leaders  of 
the  Eepublican  or  free-soil  party,  were  cognizant  of  his  de- 
signs if  they  did  not  secretly  favor  them.  Certain  it  is  that 
very  great  sympathy  was  openly  expressed  for  him  by 
many  individuals  and  by  public  meetings  at  the  North,  and 
that  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts,  by  an  almost  unan- 
imous vote,  adjourned  over  so  as  not  to  be  in  session  on  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


81 


day  of  his  execution,  avowedly  as  a  mark  of  respect  for  him, 
and  of  condemnation  at  his  execution. 

"When  this  desperate  undertaking  of  John  BroT\Ti  to  de- 
luge the  South  with  fire  and  sword,  and  the  marked  sym- 
pathy for  him  expressed  at  the  North,  w^ere  added  to  the 
failure  of  the  Northern  states  to  comply  with  their  plighted 
faith  in  regard  to  the  restoration  of  fugitive  slaves — to 
their  interference  with  the  institutions  of  those  states,  the 
persistent  libels  upon  the  Southern  people,  the  encourage- 
ment given  to  the  slaves  to  revolt  by  incendiary  publica- 
tions, the  attitude  of  hostility  assumed  by  a  great  number 
of  the  Northern  representatives  to  the  South  on  every  occa- 
sion in  which  anything  had  been  proposed  or  done  in  re- 
gard to  slavery,  and  to  the  rapid  growth  of  the  party  now 
coming  into  the  ascendency  on  the  ground  of  enmity  to 
the  South  and  her  institutions — it  may  be  well  conceived 
that  a  profound  sensation  was  created  in  the  latter  section. 

South  Carolina  then  proposed  some  agreement  between 
the  Southern  states,  for  the  purpose  of  withdrawing  from 
a  compact,  the  obligations  of  which  had  been  so  disre- 
garded, but  Virginia  discouraged  this  proposition,  as  she 
was  exceedingly  loth  to  take  any  step  looking  to  the  sever- 
ance of  a  Union  which  she  had  done  so  much  to  establish, 
and  for  which  she  had  made  so  many  sacrifices. 

By  the  commencement  of  the  canvass  for  the  Presidency 
in  1860,  the  Democratic  party  had  become  divided  on  the 
question  of  the  construction  of  the  slavery  clause  in  the 
Kansas-Nebraska  bill :  that  is  whether  the  power  to  exclude 
or  adopt  slavery  could  be  exercised  by  the  people  of  the 
territories  while  in  the  territorial  condition.  Mr.  Douglas 
and  the  greater  portion  of  the  Northern  Democrats  con- 
tended for  the  former  view,  while  nearly  all  of  the  Southern 
Democrats  advocated  the  latter.  It  was  contended  by  the 
Southern  Democrats  with  great  force  and  justice  that  if 


82 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


Congress  did  not  have  the  power  to  exclude  slavery,  the 
legislatures  of  the  territories,  which  derived  their  powers 
from  the  acts  organizing  the  territories  could  not  have 
that  power.  This  view  was  conclusive,  for  the  territorial 
legislatures,  being  now  temporary  bodies  deriving  their  sole 
powers  from  the  acts  of  Congress,  could  not  exercise  greater 
powers  than  the  body  which  created  them,  while  the  people, 
when  they  came  to  form  constitutions,  under  that  clause 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  providing  for  the 
admission  of  new  states  on  the  same  footing  with  the  old, 
were  necessarily  vested  with  that  sovereign  power  over  this 
subject  and  all  others  which  belonged  to  the  original  states. 

The  Northern  Democrats  contended  for  what  was  called 
*  *  Squatter  Sovereignity, ' '  that  is,  that  this  sovereign  power 
of  legislation  vested  in  the  settlers  of  the  territories  from 
the  beginning,  and  to  propitiate  the  free-soil  sentiment, 
many  of  them  contended  that  the  clause  in  the  Kansas- 
Nebraska  bill  secured  the  territories  to  the  north  and  free- 
soil  more  effectually  than  could  be  done  by  Congressional 
legislation,  as  settlers  from  the  North  could  more  readily 
take  possession  of  the  territories  and  exclude  slavery  from 
them,  than  settlers  from  the  South  could  introduce  slavery 
there,  while  in  Congress  the  Southern  Representatives  es- 
pecially in  the  Senate  where  the  sections  were  more  nearly 
equal,  could,  with  the  aid  of  a  few  Northern  men,  prevent 
any  interfer fence  with  slavery.  This  view  of  the  subject 
made  the  doctrine  of  squatter  sovereignty  even  more  offen- 
sive than  what  was  called  the  Wilmot  proviso,  and  Southern 
men  contended  that  it  was  a  trap  to  entrap  them. 

It  was  in  fact  not  a  question  of  construction  of  the  clause 
in  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill  but  of  the  Constitution  itself. 
If  Congress  had  no  power  to  legislate  on  the  subject,  then 
it  could  delegate  none,  and  if  there  was  such  a  thing  as 
"squatter  sovereignty"  it  extended  to  all  other  subjects  as 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


83 


well  as  to  slavery,  and  the  settlers  in  the  territories  might 
set  up  for  themselves  without  any  authority  from  Congress, 
which  would  involve  some  very  extraordinary  consequences, 
including  that  even  of  disposing  of  the  public  lands.  The 
squatter  sovereignty  view  of  the  question  was  one  not  to  be 
tolerated ;  and  it  applied  to  the  Utah  and  New  Mexico  bills 
as  well  as  to  that  in  regard  to  Kansas  and  Nebraska. 

The  great  mass  of  Southern  Whigs  agreed  with  the 
Southern  Democrats  in  their  way  of  interpreting  the  prin- 
ciple, but  they  did  not  regard  the  question  as  one  of  suffi- 
cient practical  importance  to  make  a  fight  over,  and  old 
party  divisions  and  feuds  prevented  a  coalescence  of  all  of 
the  Southern  men. 

Though  considered  by  many  an  abstract  question,  as  it 
certainly  was  so  far  as  it  applied  to  Kansas  and  Nebraska, 
it  seemed  to  divide  the  Democratic  party  into  two  wings, 
a  Northern  and  a  Southern  one,  with  some  adherents  to 
either  wing  from  the  opposite  section.  This  di^dsion  re- 
sulted in  the  nomination  of  two  sets  of  candidates  by  the 
Democratic  party — Douglas  of  Illinois  and  Johnson  of 
Georgia  by  the  Northern  T^ing,  and  Breckenridge  of  Ken- 
tucky and  Lane  of  Oregon  by  the  Southern  wing.  The  Re- 
publican free-soil  or  abolition  party  nominated  Lincoln  of 
Illinois  and  Hamlin  of  ]\Iaine,  while  the  Southern  Whigs 
and  a  reumant  of  Northern  Whigs,  who  had  not  fused  with 
the  free-soilers  and  abolitionists,  nominated  BeU  of  Ten- 
nessee and  Everett  of  Massachusetts.  The  advocates  of  this 
latter  ticket  proposed  to  sink  every  other  issue  and  stand 
for  "The  Union,  the  Constitution,  and  the  enforcement  of 
the  Laws." 

At  the  election  in  1860,  Lincoln  and  Hamlin  received  the 
majority  of  the  popular  vote  in  nearly  all  of  the  Northern 
states  and  by  that  vote  alone  secured  a  majority  of  the 
votes  of  the  electoral  colleges,  but  they  lacked  very  nearly 


84 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


1,000,000  votes  of  receiving  a  majority  of  the  combined 
popular  vote  of  the  United  States.  In  this  election  the 
Southern  people  were  unanimous  in  their  opposition  to 
Lincoln  and  Hamlin  though  divided  as  to  the  other  candi- 
dates, the  few  thousands  of  votes  given  on  the  border  for 
the  Eepublican  ticket,  being  given  by  Northern  men  who 
had  emigrated  across  the  line,  and  amounting  to  a  very 
inconsiderable  fraction. 

It  was  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  Government 
that  a  mere  sectional  candidate  had  been  elected  and  this 
was  done  upon  sectional  issues  alone.  This  result  presented 
an  alarming  state  of  things  and  developed  the  fact  that 
under  a  Eepublican  form  of  Federal  Government,  with 
suffrage  nearly  universal,  it  was  perfectly  practicable  for 
a  minority  to  get  possession  of  the  government  on  sectional 
issues  and  perhaps  control  it  permanently.  There  had 
been,  before,  presidents  elected  by  a  minority  popular  vote, 
but  this  was  on  National  issues  and  the  support  of  the  suc- 
cessful candidate  was  confined  to  no  particular  section.  Of 
the  thirteen  presidents  elected,  seven  had  been  elected  from 
Southern  states,  and  all  of  them  received  majorities  of  the 
popular  vote  except  Mr.  Polk  of  Tennessee,  and  his  prin- 
cipal opponent  was  Mr.  Clay  of  Kentucky,  a  Southern  man. 

Six  had  been  selected  from  Northern  states,  and  but  one 
of  them,  Harrison  of  Ohio,  but  a  native  of  Virginia,  re- 
ceived a  majority  of  the  popular  votes. 

Of  the  Southern  presidents,  Washington's  electoral  vote  . 
was  unanimous.  Jefferson  received  twenty  Northern  elec- 
toral votes  at  his  first  election,  and  all  but  nine  of  them  at 
his  second.  Madison  received  a  majority  of  Northern 
electoral  votes  at  his  first  election  and  forty  of  them  at  his 
second.  Monroe  received  a  very  large  majority  of  Northern 
electoral  votes  at  his  first  election  and  all  but  one  at  his 
last,  that  being  the  only  vote  cast  against  him.  Jackson 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


85 


received  73  Northern  and  Northwestern  electoral  votes  out 
of  147  cast,  at  his  first  election  and  a  very  large  majority  at 
his  second  election.  Polk  received  103  of  the  same  vote  to 
58  cast  for  Mr.  Clay  and  Taylor  received  a  large  majority 
of  the  same  vote. 

Of  the  Northern  presidents,  John  Adams  received  12 
electoral  votes  from  the  South.  John  Quincy  Adams  re- 
ceived six  electoral  votes  from  the  slave  states  and  was 
elected  by  the  House  of  Representatives,  receiving  the 
votes  of  several  slave  states.  Van  Buren  received  61  out 
of  126  votes  cast  by  the  slave  states,  28  of  the  rest  being 
cast  for  Harrison.  Harrison  received  a  large  majority  of 
Southern  electoral  votes,  as  did  Pierce  and  Buchanan  and 
in  every  election  the  majority  of  Northern  electoral  votes 
had  been  cast  for  the  successful  candidates,  except  at  Jef- 
ferson's first  election,  Madison's  second,  Jackson's  first  and 
Buchanan's  election  and  in  this  the  majority  of  that  vote 
had  been  cast  for  Fremont,  the  sectional  Republican  candi- 
date. Two  vice-presidents,  Tyler  from  Virginia  and  Fill- 
more of  New  York,  had  succeeded  to  the  presidency  by  the 
deaths  of  the  incumbents  and  both  of  them  had  received 
majorities  of  the  popular  vote  as  well  as  of  the  Northern 
electoral  vote. 

Lincoln's  election  therefore  was  the  first  instance  of  the  ^ 
election  of  a  mere  sectional  president.  It  was  very  evident 
that  if  the  party  electing  him  continued  in  possession  of  . 
the  government  for  any  length  of  time,  there  would  inevita- 
bly follow  a  subversion  of  the  rights  of  the  states  and  a 
consolidation  of  all  power  in  the  Federal  government  under 
the  control  of  a  sectional  majority,  not  a  majority  of  the 
whole.  This  form  of  consolidation  promised  to  be  infinitely 
worse  than  an  entire  obliteration  of  all  state  lines  and  a 
concentration  of  power  in  the  hands  of  the  entire  people. 


86 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


Under  the  circumstances  attending  the  election  of  Lin- 
coln, those  of  the  Southern  states  which  are  usually  desig- 
nated the  Cotton  States"  deemed  thal^  their  own  safety 
required  their  withdrawal  from  the  Union,  and  they  conse- 
quently withdrew.  The  legislature  of  South  Carolina  was 
in  session  for  the  purpose  of  appointing  electors  for  presi- 
dent, and  when  the  result  was  ascertained,  a  convention  for 
that  state  was  called,  which  adopted  an  ordinance  of  seces- 
sion on  the  20th  of  December,  1860.  Georgia,  Florida, 
Alabama,  Mississippi  and  Louisiana  soon  followed  the 
example  of  South  Carolina,  and  a  Congress  of  the  seceding 
states  met  at  Montgomery,  Alabama,  early  in  February, 
1861,  and  organized  a  provisional  government  under  the 
style  of  the  ''Confederate  States  of  America,"  of  which 
the  Honorable  Jefferson  Davis,  of  Mississippi,  was  ap- 
pointed President,  and  the  Honorable  A.  H.  Stephens,  of 
Georgia,  Vice-President. 

Texas  had  previously  adopted  an  ordinance  of  secession 
which  went  into  effect  when  it  was  certified  by  the  popular 
vote  and  that  state  soon  afterwards  became  also  one  of  the 
Confederate  States. 

A  permanent  constitution  was  adopted  for  the  Confeder- 
ate States  to  go  into  effect  on  the  22d  of  February,  1862, 
modelled  after  that  of  the  United  States,  but  containing 
some  changes  in  the  details  and  the  powers  delegated,  with 
more  ample  recognition  of  states  rights  and  a  prohibition 
of  the  introduction  of  slaves  from  any  other  than  the  slave- 
holding  states  and  territories  of  the  United  States. 

The  secession  of  these  states  had  been  without  violence, 
except  to  take  possession  of  some  forts  and  arsenals  of  the 
United  States  within  the  limits  of  the  seceding  states, 
which  had  been  accomplished  without  bloodshed.  Commis- 
sioners were  appointed  to  the  United  States  government,  to 
effect  a  peaceful  settlement  of  all  questions  between  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


87 


two  governments  in  regard  to  the  public  debt,  territory,  etc. 

This  change  in  the  relations  of  the  seceding  states  to  the 
United  States  resulted  in  no  change  whatever  in  the  do- 
mestic affairs  of  those  states,  but  they  continued  to  be  regu- 
lated as  before  under  the  laws  and  constitutions  of  the 
several  states. 


CHAPTER  V 


Arltnn  of  %  Mnrhn  Blurts  Bt^tm—dlommtmn 
nf  Utrgtma 

The  Border  Slave  States/*  as  they  were  called,  includ- 
ing North  Carolina,  Tennessee  and  Arkansas,  which  im- 
mediately joined  the  Cotton  States"  on  the  south,  though 
equally  appreciating  the  outrages  upon  their  rights  and  the 
dangers  to  be  apprehended  in  the  future,  were  not  at  first 
disposed  to  secede,  as  they  had  cherished  such  an  habitual 
attachment  to  the  Union  that  they  were  exceedingly  loth 
to  give  it  up,  being  governed  by  that  sentiment  described 
in  the  Declaration  of  Independence  in  the  assertion  "that 
mankind  are  more  disposed  to  suffer,  while  evils  are  suffer- 
able  than  to  right  themselves  by  abolishing  the  forms  to 
which  they  are  accustomed.'' 

The  majority  of  the  people  of  those  states  were  actuated 
by  hope  that  the  party  which  was  about  to  obtain  posses- 
sion of  the  government  would  not  long  hold  together,  and 
they  trusted  that  the  sober  second  thought  of  the  people  of 
the  North  would  keep  the  dominant  party  within  bounds 
until  it  could  be  ejected  from  power,  and  that  in  the  mean- 
time guaranties  might  be  obtained  for  the  rights  of  the 
states,  so  as  to  bring  the  government  back  to  a  conformity 
with  its  original  designs,  and  effect  a  restoration  of  the 
Union.  This  was  especially  the  case  with  the  State  of  Vir- 
ginia, which  had  made  so  many  sacrifices  to  establish  and 
perpetuate  the  Union,  which  in  great  part  had  been  the 
work  of  her  own  hands.  The  legislature  of  Virginia  was 
in  session  when  the  secession  of  the  *  *  Cotton  States ' '  began, 
and  the  crisis  was  of  such  a  threatening  nature  that  an  act 
was  passed,  providing  for  the  assemblage  of  a  convention, 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


89 


vested  with  the  sovereign  power  of  the  state,  but  directing 
at  the  same  time,  that  a  vote  should  be  taken  upon  the 
question  of  any  ordinance  of  secession  which  might  be 
adopted^  and  that  it  should  be  submitted  to  the  popular 
vote  for  ratification  before  it  should  be  effectual.  The 
legislature  also  by  resolution,  invited  a  convention  of  com- 
missioners from  all  of  the  non-seceding  states.  North  and 
South,  to  assemble  at  Washington  for  the  purpose  of  con- 
sulting upon  and  devising  some  plan  for  adjusting  the 
pending  difficulties  with  a  view  to  a  restoration  of  the 
Union.  This  latter  convention  assembled  and  was  known 
as  the  ' '  Peace  Convention. ' ' 

The  election  for  members  of  the  Virginia  convention  took 
place  on  the  first  Monday  in  February,  1861,  and  a  large 
majority  of  the  delegates  elected  were  opposed  to  secession. 
The  convention  assembled  at  the  Capitol  in  Richmond,  on 
the  13th  of  February,  and  a  decided  union  man,  Mr.  John 
J anney,  of  Loudoun,  was  chosen  President.  A  deliberative 
body  containing  more  general  talent  and  worth  had  rarely, 
if  ever,  assembled  in  the  state,  and  all  of  the  members 
seemed  to  be  impressed  with  the  momentous  character  of 
the  crisis.  This  convention  contained  one  distinguished 
gentleman  who  had  been  President  of  the  United  States, 
another  who  had  been  governor  of  the  state,  a  number  who 
had  filled  seats  in  the  Federal  Congress,  two  who  had  been 
heads  of  departments  in  the  Cabinet  at  Washington,  besides 
many  others  among  the  most  talented  and  distinguished 
statesmen  and  lawyers  of  the  state. 

There  was  a  variety  of  sentiment  among  the  Union  mem- 
bers as  to  the  terms  upon  which  it  would  be  safe  for  the 
state  to  remain  in  the  Union,  but  a  very  large  majority 
were  earnestly  in  favor  of  some  adjustment  in  the  way  of 
amendments  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  by 
which  the  seceded  states  could  be  induced  to  return,  while 


90 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


the  members  favoring  immediate  secession  constituted  a 
very  small  minority.  A  committee  was  at  once  appointed, 
which  after  considerable  deliberation  reported  a  plan  of  ad- 
justment for  submission  to  the  other  states  through  Con- 
gress, after  its  adoption  by  the  convention.  In  the  mean- 
time the  Peace  Convention  which  assembled  at  Washington, 
had  adopted  a  proposition  for  adjustment  which  met  with 
no  favor  at  the  hands  of  the  Republican  members  of  Con- 
gress, and  was  not  entirely  satisfactory  to  a  majority  of  the 
Virginia  Convention.  Propositions  of  compromise  in  Con- 
gress had  also  failed. 

The  Virginia  Convention  engaged  earnestly  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  report  of  its  committee  and  counter  proposi- 
tions, and  continued  it  until  the  month  of  April,  having 
in  the  meantime  voted  down,  by  a  very  large  majority,  a 
direct  proposition  for  secession. 

It  is  difficult  to  describe  the  intense  anxiety  felt  by  most 
of  the  members  of  the  convention  to  preserve  the  peace  of 
the  country  and  effect  an  amicable  settlement  of  the 
troubles.  Lincoln  had  been  inaugurated  president  on  the 
4th  of  March,  and  had  delivered  an  inaugural  address  that 
was  enigmatical  in  its  terms.  During  the  whole  of  the  dis- 
cussion which  was  progressing  in  the  Virginia  convention, 
the  members  engaged  in  the  effort  to  preserve  peace  and 
restore  the  Union,  received  no  offer  whatever  of  co-opera- 
tion from  the  occupant  of  the  White  House,  and  no  direct 
answer  ever  reached  them  as  coming  from  him  to  persons 
who  approached  him  on  the  questions  engrossing  all  hearts 
and  minds  in  the  state. 

In  the  early  part  of  April,  the  convention  had  become 
very  anxious  in  regard  to  the  uncertain  condition  of  things, 
and  appointed  a  committee  of  three  of  its  members,  of  great 
ability  and  experience  to  wait  upon  Mr.  Lincoln  and  as- 
certain from  him,  in  a  respectful  manner,  what  course  he 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


91 


proposed  to  take  in  regard  to  the  seceded  states.  This  com- 
mittee reached  Washington  a  little  before  the  attack  on 
Fort  Sumter  in  Charleston  Harbor,  and  had  an  interview 
with  Mr.  Lincoln,  receiving  very  little  encouragement  from 
him.  While  the  committee  was  awaiting  a  formal  answer, 
which  was  promised,  the  news  of  the  commencement  of  the 
bombardment  of  Fort  Sumter  was  received,  and  the  reply 
from  Mr.  Lincoln  appeared  in  extra  issues  from  the  press 
without  having  been  communicated  to  the  committee. 

This  reply  was  enigmatical  in  its  terms  like  the  inaugural, 
but  was  rather  stronger  on  the  question  of  coercion.  The 
committee  at  once  returned  and  reported  to  the  convention 
the  result  of  its  mission,  and  Fort  Sumter  having  fallen,  a 
proclamation  from  Lincoln  soon  followed,  on  the  15th  of 
April,  calling  on  the  states,  Virginia  included,  for  75,000 
troops  'Ho  repossess  the  forts,  places  and  property  which 
have  been  seized  from  the  Union.  ^' 

There  was  no  mistaking  that  this  meant  war  on  the 
seceded  states,  and  the  Virginia  convention  went  into  secret 
session,  when  an  ordinance  of  secession  was  introduced  by 
Mr.  Ballard  Preston,  Chairman  of  the  Committee,  which 
had  waited  on  Lincoln,  and  up  to  that  time  an  opponent  of 
secession.  After  a  very  earnest  discussion,  that  ordinance 
was  adopted  on  the  17th  day  of  April. 

A  number  of  members  of  the  convention,  including  my- 
self, who  afterwards  fully  sustained  the  action  of  the  state, 
voted  against  the  passage  of  this  ordinance  with  the  hope, 
even  in  that  stage  of  the  controversy,  that  the  people  of 
the  North  would  not  respond  to  the  call  of  Lincoln  for 
troops,  and  that  a  disruption  of  the  Union  and  the  horrors 
of  war  might  still  be  avoided.  The  scenes  which  occurred 
during  the  discussion  which  ensued  after  the  convention 
went  into  secret  session,  were  characterized  by  a  solemnity 
rarely  witnessed  in  a  deliberative  body  and  several  mem- 


92 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


bers  while  speaking  were  unable  to  restrain  their  tears.  As 
for  myself,  it  was  exceedingly  difficult  to  surrender  the  at- 
tachment of  a  lifetime  to  that  Union  which  had  been  ce- 
mented by  the  blood  of  so  many  patriots,  and  which  I  had 
been  accustomed  to  look  upon  (in  the  language  of  Washing- 
ton) as  the  palladium  of  the  political  safety  and  prosperity 
of  the  country,  and  therefore  I  had  hoped  even  against 
hope,  but  I  soon  became  convinced  fully  that  the  action  of 
the  convention  was  right,  and  that  it  could  have  pursued  no 
other  course,  consistently  with  the  honor  and  dignity  of 
Virginia,  and  in  this  opinion  I  have  remained  firmly  fixed, 
notwithstanding  the  result  of  the  war  which  ensued. 

After  the  passage  of  the  ordinance  of  secession,  provision 
was  made  for  submitting  it  to  the  popular  vote  for  ratifica- 
tion, at  the  elections  to  be  held  on  the  fourth  Thursday  in 
May.  In  the  meantime  steps  were  taken  for  placing  the 
state  in  a  condition  of  defence,  and  an  ordinance  was  passed 
directing  the  governor  to  call  into  service  of  the  state  as 
many  volunteers  as  might  be  necessary  to  defend  it  against 
invasion.  Colonel  Robert  E.  Lee,  a  native  and  citizen  of 
Virginia,  who  had  resigned  his  commission  in  the  United 
States  Army  on  hearing  the  action  of  his  state,  was  ap- 
pointed by  the  governor,  with  the  consent  of  the  convention, 
commander-in-chief  of  all  of  the  forces  of  the  state  with  the 
rank  of  Major  General. 

In  the  meantime  an  arrangement  was  made  with  the  Con- 
federate Government  for  assistance  in  defending  the  state,  in 
the  event  of  an  attempt  by  the  government  at  Washington 
to  march  troops  into  or  through  it  with  a  view  to  an  in- 
vasion of  any  of  the  seceded  states,  and  the  Confederate 
Government  was  invited  to  remove  to  the  City  of  Eichmond. 

The  convention  remained  in  session  until  the  first  day  of 
May,  when  it  adjourned  over  to  the  second  week  in  June  to 
await  the  result  of  the  popular  vote  on  the  ordinance  of 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


93 


secession.    The  ratification  was  given  by  an  overwhelming 

majority  of  the  popular  vote,  and  upon  the  re-assembling 
of  the  convention  the  ordinance  was  duly  signed  by  the 
greater  part  of  the  members.  I  had  voted  for  the  ratifica- 
tion at  the  polls  and  now  put  my  signature  to  the  ordinance. 

Virginia  now  had  fully  and  completely  dissolved  her 
connection  with  the  United  States,  and  resumed  the  powers 
she  had  delegated  when  she  ratified  the  Constitution.  To 
this  step  she  had  been  impelled  against  her  previous  inclina- 
tions, by  the  course  of  the  government  at  Washington,  to 
avoid  being  dragged  into  an  unholy  war  against  the  Cotton 
States,  and  to  maintain  the  cherished  principles  for  which 
she  had  fought,  and  which  she  had  uniformly  asserted  since 
the  adoption  of  the  United  States  Constitution.  AVhen  the 
act  of  secession  was  complete,  she  adopted  the  Constitution 
of  the  Confederate  States,  both  provisional  and  permanent, 
and  was  fully  admitted  into  the  Confederacy. 

North  Carolina,  Tennessee  and  Arkansas  likewise  with- 
drew from  the  Union  and  became  members  of  the  Confeder- 
acy for  the  same  reasons  which  influenced  Virginia.  ]\Iis- 
souri  subseciuently  passed  an  ordinance  of  secession  and 
joined  the  Confederacy,  but  that  state  was  soon  overrun  by 
United  States  troops,  and  the  regular  government  was  sub- 
verted and  another  substituted  in  its  place  by  the  force 
of  Federal  bayonets.  Kentucky  undertook  to  occupy  a 
neutral  position  until  the  greater  part  of  that  state  was  in 
the  power  of  the  Federal  troops,  when  an  irregular  govern- 
ment was  formed  which  passed  an  ordinance  of  secession 
and  joined  the  Confederacy.  The  situation  of  Maryland 
was  such  that  she  was  soon  overruii  by  troops  and  prevented 
any  legislative  expression  of  opinion,  the  members  of  her 
legislature  being  seized  and  imprisoned.  Little  Delaware 
was  so  situated  that  its  voice  was  never  heard  at  all. 


CHAPTER  VI 


The  causes  which  led  to  the  secession  of  the  Southern 
States  have  never  been  given,  and  when  they  are  compared 
with  those  which  led  to  the  American  Revolution  as  given 
by  the  First  Continental  Congress,  the  latter  sink  into  com- 
parative insignificance.  A  large  portion  of  the  wrongs  com- 
plained of  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence  were  acts 
committed  after  the  commencement  of  the  collisions  between 
the  British  troops  and  the  Colonists,  and  if  these  were  com- 
pared with  those  committed  by  the  Federal  troops  in  the 
beginning  of  the  war,  in  Maryland,  Kentucky  and  Missouri, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  long  list  of  outrages  perpetrated  dur- 
ing its  progress,  the  indictment  against  King  George  con- 
tained in  the  eloquent  language  of  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence, would  be  a  very  tame  affair  in  comparison  with 
that  which  could  be  preferred  against  the  Government  at 
Washington. 

The  third  article  of  the  Confederation  had  specified  the 
object  for  which  it  had  been  formed,  and  that  it  was  **A 
firm  league  of  friendship ' '  for  the  common  defence,  the  se- 
curity of  the  liberties  and  the  mutual  and  general  welfare, 
and  that  the  states  bound  themselves  to  assist  each  other 
against  all  force  offered  to  or  attacks  made  upon  them  or 
any  of  them  ' '  on  account  of  religion,  sovereignity,  trade  or 
any  other  pretense  whatever."  The  preamble  to  the  Con- 
stitution recites  that  it  was  made  ''to  form  a  more  perfect 
union."  More  perfect  how?  To  the  subversion  of  the 
liberties  and  sovereignty  of  the  states?  Had  the  conduct 
of  the  Northern  States  been  that  of  the  members  of  ''a 
firm  league  and  friendship?"  And  when  they  had  so  flag- 
rantly violated  and  neglected  the  plain  stipulations  of  the 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


95 


Constitution,  did  not  the  Southern  States  have  the  same 
right  to  withdraw  from  the  connection  with  them,  that  the 
colonies  had  to  withdraw  from  the  connection  with  Great 
Britain,  because  the  government  which  had  been  instituted 
for  ''the  common  defence  and  general  welfare"  had  be- 
come ''destructive  of  those  ends?" 

Who  was  to  judge  of  whether  there  was  a  necessity  for 
severing  the  connection,  the  oppressor  or  the  oppressed  ?  If 
the  former,  then  the  decision  would  have  been  against  the 
colonies.  If  colonies,  the  mere  offshoots  from  the  mother 
coimtry,  could  undertake  to  judge  the  sufficiency  of  the 
grievances  and  the  mode  and  measure  of  redress,  could  not 
sovereign  states  which  had  framed  the  government  of  which 
they  complained,  do  the  same  thing  ?  In  seceding  from  the 
Union,  the  Cotton  States  had  acted  as  states,  and  not  as 
factious  individuals  resisting  the  laws  or  authority  of  the 
government.  The  right  of  no  one  had  been  violated,  and 
it  was  not  proposed  to  violate  the  rights  of  any  individuals 
or  states,  but  merely  to  dissolve  a  compact,  the  terms  of 
which  had  been  violated.  To  undertake  to  coerce  those 
states  by  military  force  was  subversive  of  the  whole  spirit 
and  purpose  of  the  Constitution,  and  made  the  government 
the  master,  instead  of  the  agent,  of  the  powers  which  had 
created  it.  This  doctrine  of  coercion  had  never  been  as- 
serted by  any  respectable  statesman  since  the  foundation  of 
the  government,  and  was  at  war  with  all  of  its  principles 
and  aims.  When  therefore  the  other  states  were  called 
upon  to  engage  in  this  war  of  coercion  against  the  Cotton 
States,  it  was  not  only  their  right  but  their  duty  to  resist. 
By  the  very  terms  of  the  Constitution,  it  was  made  the 
duty  of  the  Federal  Government  to  protect  the  states 
against  invasion.  Did  that  government  have  the  right  to 
invade  the  state  it  was  bound  to  protect?  It  was  not 
authorized  even  to  protect  the  states  against  domestic  vio- 


96 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


lence  except  upon  invitation  of  the  legislature  or  of  the 
executive,  when  the  legislature  was  not  in  session.  Was 
it  authorized  to  create  that  domestic  violence?  The  power 
of  coercion  involved  the  anomalous  consequence  of  reducing 
the  states  to  conquered  provinces  when  exercised,  and  this 
involved  the  self-destruction  of  the  government  itself. 

In  regard  to  this  question  of  the  right  of  the  states  to 
withdraw,  and  the  power  of  coercion,  it  is  not  inappropriate 
to  call  attention  to  the  following  views  expressed  by  Mr. 
Horace  Greeley,  one  of  the  ablest  writers  and  firmest  sup- 
porters of  the  Republican  or  abolition  party.  In  an  article 
published  in  the  New  York  Tribune  a  few  day  after  the 
election  of  Lincoln  in  1860,  and  reproduced  in  his  work 
styled  ' '  The  American  Conflict ' '  he  says : 

' '  That  was  a  base  and  hypocritic  row  that  was  once  raised 
at  Southern  dictation  about  the  ears  of  John  Quincy 
Adams,  because  he  presented  a  petition  for  the  dissolution 
of  the  Union.  The  petitioner  had  a  right  to  make  the  re- 
quest; it  was  the  member's  duty  to  present  it.  And  now 
if  the  Cotton  States  consider  the  value  of  the  Union  de- 
batable, we  maintain  their  perfect  right  to  discuss  it.  Nay ! 
we  hold,  with  Mr.  Jefferson,  to  the  inalienable  right  of 
communities  to  alter  or  abolish  forms  of  government  that 
have  become  injurious  or  oppressive,  and  if  the  Cotton 
States  shall  decide  that  they  can  do  better  out  of  the  Union 
than  in  it,  we  insist  upon  letting  them  go  in  peace.  The 
right  to  secede  may  be  a  revolutionary  one  but  it  exists 
nevertheless,  and  we  do  not  see  how  one  party  can  have  a 
right  to  do  what  another  party  has  a  right  to  prevent.  We 
must  ever  resist  the  asserted  right  of  any  state  to  coercion 
in  the  Union,  and  nulify  and  defy  the  laws  thereof;  to 
withdraw  from  the  Union  is  quite  another  matter.  And 
whenever  a  considerable  section  of  our  Union  shall  deliber- 
ately resolve  to  go  out,  we  shall  resist  all  coercive  measures 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


97 


to  keep  it  in.  We  hope  never  to  live  in  a  republic  whereof 
one  section  is  pinned  to  another  by  bayonets. 

"But  while  we  uphold  the  practical  liberty,  if  not  the 
abstract  right  of  secession,  we  must  insist  that  the  step  be 
taken,  if  ever  it  shall  be,  with  the  deliberation  and  gravity 
becoming  so  momentous  an  issue. 

"Let  ample  time  be  given  for  reflection,  let  the  subject 
be  fully  canvassed  before  the  people,  and  let  a  popular 
vote  be  taken  in  every  case  before  secession  is  decreed.  Let 
the  people  be  told  just  why  they  are  asked  to  break  up  the 
Confederation;  let  them  reflect,  deliberate,  then  vote;  and 
let  the  act  of  secession  be  the  echo  of  an  unmistakable 
popular  fiat.  A  judgment  thus  rendered,  a  demand  for 
separation  so  backed,  would  either  be  acquiesced  in  with- 
out effusion  of  blood,  or  those  who  rushed  upon  carnage  to 
defy  or  defeat  it,  would  place  themselves  clearly  in  the 
wrong." 

It  would  be  hard  to  conceive  language  more  forcible  for 
defining  the  right  of  the  states  to  withdraw  and  the  wrong 
and  criminality  of  the  attempt  to  coerce  them  when  they 
had  exercised  that  right,  than  this  of  Mr.  Greeley's.  It  de- 
rives additional  force  as  coming  from  him,  when  it  is  recol- 
lected that  he  had  ever  been  inimical  to  the  institutions  of 
the  South,  and  it  announced  principles  which  had  been 
previously  asserted  in  all  questions  of  the  Union,  and  un- 
derlay the  whole  superstructure  of  a  government  which  it- 
self was  founded  on  the  right  of  revolution.  It  is  difficult 
to  realize  the  fact  that  the  man  who  uttered  language  like 
that  quoted,  subsequently  became  one  of  the  most  strenuous 
advocates  of  the  war  of  coercion,  which  was  waged  on  the 
Southern  states.  Mr.  Greeley  cannot  avoid  the  effect  of  his 
statement  of  the  principles  asserted  in  his  article,  by  con- 
tending that  the  act  of  separation  was  not  "the  echo  of  an 
unmistakeable  popular  fiat,"  and  that  the  Southern  people 


98 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


were  precipitated  into  secession  without  due  deliberation. 

When  the  right  to  discuss,  deliberate  and  decide,  exists, 
those  possessing  it,  must  necessarily  be  the  sole  judges  of 
how  it  is  to  be  exercised.  The  Southern  states  did  de- 
liberate and  did  decide  that  they  could  no  longer  remain  in 
the  Union  with  safety,  and  therefore  they  determined  to 
withdraw  from  it.  If  the  Southern  people  had  been  hur- 
ried into  secession  by  their  leaders,  they  are  the  parties  to 
complain  and  to  hold  the  guilty  ones  responsible.  They 
have  not  done  so,  and  what  right  had  Mr.  Greeley  and  his 
party  to  become  their  champions  against  their  wishes  ?  He 
and  his  party  are  estopped  from  denying  that  the  Southern 
people,  did  with  almost  entire  unanimity,  adopt  secession  and 
willingly  gave  their  support  to  the  cause  of  separation ;  for 
since  their  country  was  overrun  by  a  superior  military 
force,  their  state  governments  overthrown;  military  despot- 
isms established  over  them ;  and  in  the  effort  to  reconstruct 
the  Union,  the  great  mass  of  the  people  disfranchised,  and 
the  right  of  suffrage  given  to  the  freed  slaves,  because  it 
was  alleged  that  the  Southern  people  were  still  rebellious, 
and  so  wedded  to  the  idea  of  secession,  notwithstanding  the 
bitter  experience  of  the  war,  that  they  could  not  be  trusted 
with  the  right  to  vote  and  hold  office.  All  of  this  was  done 
with  Mr.  Greeley's  full  knowledge  and  sanction. 

It  has  been  shown  how  long,  how  earnestly,  and  how 
anxiously  the  question  was  discussed  in  Virginia,  and  that 
secession  was  resorted  to  by  that  state  only  when  a  war  of 
coercion  had  been  proclaimed,  and  she  had  been  required 
to  furnish  troops  to  carry  it  on.  The  state  of  Virginia  be- 
lieved, with  Mr.  Greeley,  that  it  would  be  a  grievous  wrong 
to  ''rush  upon  carnage  to  defy  and  defeat"  the  right  of 
the  Cotton  States  to  withdraw  from  the  Union ;  and  she  de- 
termined to  do  what  he  had  declared  his  purpose  of  doing : 
that  is  "resist  all  coercive  measures."    The  ordinance  of 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


99 


secession  was  submitted  to  the  popular  vote  at  an  election 
held  more  than  one  month  after  its  adoption  by  the  con- 
vention, and  it  was  ratified  by  an  overwhelming  majority, 
thus  showing  beyond  dispute  that  it  was  "the  echo  of  an 
unmistakable  popular  fiat."  Did  not  "those  who  rushed 
upon  carnage  to  defy  and  defeat"  "a  judgment  thus 
rendered,  a  separation  so  backed,"  "place  themselves 
clearly  in  the  wrong  1 ' ' 

Yet  Virginia  was  the  first  of  the  seceding  states  invaded 
by  the  Federal  army ;  her  towns  and  plains  were  devastated 
by  a  long  and  cruel  war ;  her  people  plundered,  imprisoned 
and  murdered;  her  territory  severed,  and  a  new  state 
erected  within  her  limits,  in  violation  of  the  Constitution 
of  the  United  States.  Subsequently  a  military  despotism 
was  thrust  upon  them,  and  the  freed  slaves  were  vested 
with  the  right  of  suffrage  and  the  capacity  to  hold  office, 
while  such  wide  measures  of  disfranchisement  were  adopted 
that  enough  men  competent  to  fill  the  petty  offices  of  state, 
even  with  those  whose  fears  and  cupidity  led  them  to 
apostatize  and  the  influx  of  adventurers  could  not  be  found 
in  all  the  limits  of  that  old  commonwealth  which  has  been 
designated  "the  mother  of  states  and  of  statesmen." 

In  the  case  of  ]\Iaryland,  Kentucky  and  Missouri,  the 
people  were  overrun  by  Federal  troops  owing  to  the  pec- 
uliar nature  of  their  situation,  and  they  were  deprived  of 
the  opportunity  of  freely  discussing  and  deliberating  upon 
the  questions  involved,  though  the  legislature  of  ]\Iissouri 
did  pass  an  ordinance  of  secession.  Did  not  those  people, 
under  such  circumstances,  have  the  right  individually  to 
resist  so  flagrant  an  outrage  upon  their  rights  and  liberties? 
They  were  not  only  deprived  of  the  liberty  of  peaceably  as- 
sembling to  discuss  their  grievances,  but  it  was  sought  to 
deprive  them  of  the  right  "to  keep  and  bear  arms,"  as  ex- 
pressly guaranteed  by  the  second  amendment  to  the  Con- 


100 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


stitution,  in  order  that  they  might  have  the  means  always 
of  defending  their  liberties  and  rights,  and  the  only  re- 
source they  had  was  to  unite  as  individuals  in  the  defence 
of  the  common  cause,  and  of  their  own  violated  homes  and 
liberties. 

It  has  been  said  that  the  Confederate  states  began  the 
war  by  firing  upon  Fort  Sumter.  If  those  states  had  the 
right  to  withdraw  from  the  Union  and  the  United  States 
had  no  right  to  resist  or  coerce  them  then  the  attempt  to 
maintain  a  garrisoned  fort  in  one  of  the  most  important 
harbors  of  the  Confederacy,  was  an  act  of  war.  This  had, 
nevertheless,  been  patiently  borne  with,  for  nearly  three 
months  after  the  secession  of  South  Carolina,  in  whose 
principal  harbor  the  Fort  was  situated,  and  it  was  only 
when  the  Government  of  the  United  States  had  given 
notice  of  its  intention  to  supply  Fort  Sumter  "peaceably, 
if  possible,  otherwise  by  force,"  and  the  vessels  for  that 
purpose  had  appeared  off  the  harbor,  that  the  attack  began. 
The  commissioners  sent  to  Washington  to  effect  a  peaceable 
settlement  of  all  questions  had  then  been  denied  an  audi- 
ence, and  informed  that  the  authorities  at  Washington 
would  hold  no  intercourse  with  them. 

The  war  was  thus  inevitable,  and  the  Federal  authorities 
were  quietly  preparing  for  it,  in  order  to  entrap  the  border 
states.  The  threat  to  supply  Fort  Sumter  indicated  a  pur- 
pose of  war ;  was  then  the  Confederate  Government  to  wait 
until  the  measures  of  the  Government  at  Washington  had 
been  so  completely  taken  that  the  former  would  find  itself 
helpless  in  the  hands  of  its  enemy  ?  The  port  of  Charleston 
was  necessary  to  it  as  an  inlet  for  obtaining  supplies  and 
arms  for  its  defence,  was  it  then  to  allow  the  port,  which 
could  block  the  entrance  to  that  harbor,  to  be  placed  in  a 
condition  to  render  the  blockade  complete,  the  harbor 
worthless  and  Charleston  untenable? 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


101 


There  can  be  no  question  of  tlie  right  of  the  Confederate 

Government  to  force  a  surrender  of  the  fort.  Avhich  had 
been  refused,  and  that  it  was  fully  warranted  in  pursuing 
the  course  it  did.  I  must  confess  that,  at  the  time.  I  deeply 
deplored  and  condemned  the  attack  on  Fort  Sumter,  on  the 
score  of  policy,  because  I  regarded  the  threat  of  the  "Wash- 
ington Government  as  designed  to  provoke  a  commence- 
ment of  the  conflict  by  the  firing  of  the  first  shot,  and  not 
intended  really  to  be  carried  into  effect.  It  is  now  manifest 
that  war  had  already  been  resolved  upon,  and  the  firing  of 
the  first  gun  on  Fort  Sumter  was  not  its  commencement. 
The  war  was  begtin  by  the  attempt  to  hold  the  forts  in  the 
Confederate  harbors. 

It  has  been  alleged  that  the  Southern  States  had  pre- 
viously controlled  the  policy  of  the  government,  and  that 
they  seceded  becatise  they  had  now  lost  that  power.  There 
had  never  been  a  president  elected  from  any  of  the  Cotton 
States,  which  established  the  Confederate  Government  ex- 
cept from  Louisiana,  of  which  state  General  Taylor  was  a 
nominal  resident,  but  really  a  native  of  Virginia,  and  an 
officer  in  the  army,  and  he  lived  but  a  little  over  a  year 
after  his  inaugttration.  These  Cotton  States  had  furnished 
comparatively  few  cabinet  ministers,  and  they  had  in  the 
main  been  opposed  to  the  policy  ptirsued  by  the  govern- 
ment in  regard  to  the  most  important  branches  of  It^gisla- 
tion.  stich  as  internal  improvements,  the  pttblic  lands,  tariff, 
etc.  Their  leading  interest,  the  culture  of  cotton,  had  re- 
ceived no  fostering  care  whatever  from  the  government, 
and  South  Carolina  had  been  complaining  for  more  than 
thirty  years  that  her  interest  had  been  sacrificed  to  Xorth- 
ern  cupidity  by  high  tariff  and  at  one  time  she  had  taken 
steps  to  nullify  the  laws  on  that  sttbject.  In  no  sense  cotild 
the  state  which  initiated  secession,  be  said  to  be  actttated  by 
disappointment  at  the  loss  of  Federal  power. 


102 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


It  is  true  that  they  had  lost  the  power  to  protect  them- 
selves in  the  Union,  as  the  Constitution  had  been  so  flag- 
rantly violated  and  were  now  threatened  with  submission — 
and  for  this  they  seceded. 

The  state  of  Virginia  had  given  four  of  the  Southern 
presidents  to  the  Union,  and  Tennessee  the  other  two. 
Washington  had  been  the  unanimous  choice  of  all  of  the 
states;  Jefferson,  Madison  and  Munroe  had  been  national 
men  in  their  policy  and  had  received  the  support  of  a  large 
majority  of  the  Northern  vote;  Munroe  being  accepted 
without  opposition  at  his  last  election  and  receiving  all  of 
the  votes.  North  and  South,  but  one  northern  electoral 
vote.  Munroe  w;as  the  last  Virginian  elected  or  nominated 
as  President.  It  is  true  Tyler  had  succeeded  to  the  office  by 
the  death  of  Harrison,  but  he  had  not  received  the  vote  of 
Virginia  even  as  vice-president. 

Virginia  had  voted  against  Clay,  Harrison,  Taylor  and 
Scott,  all  na,tives  of  the  state,  when  they  were  candidates 
for  the  presidency,  and  she  had  cast  her  vote  three  times 
against  Mr.  Clay,  and  in  the  cases  of  Harrison,  Taylor  and 
Scott,  her  vote  had  been  cast  for  Northern  men  against 
them.  All  of  the  presidents  she  had  given  had  been  re- 
elected, because  there  was  nothing  sectional  or  local  in  their 
policy,  while  no  Northern  president  had  been  re-elected, 
though  three  out  of  the  six  had  been  candidates  again.  In 
the  election  of  1860,  the  state  of  Virginia  cast  its  vote  for 
Bell  and  Everett,  by  a  plurality  vote  over  Breckenridge 
and  Lane,  and  Douglas  and  Johnson,  showing  that  in  this 
election  she  was  not  liable  to  the  charge  of  sectionalism, 
even  if  that  charge  could  be  brought  against  the  supporters 
of  Breckenridge  and  Lane,  which  is  by  no  means  admitted. 
No  interest  of  Virginia  had  at  any  time  been  fostered  by 
the  action  of  the  government,  in  any  stage  of  its  history, 
and  the  government  had  not  even  taken  steps  to  obtain 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


103 


from  foreign  countries  a  diminution  of  the  enormous  duties 
placed  on  her  leading  staple,  tobacco,  but  her  statesmen, 
when  in  office,  had  pursued  a  policy  looking  to  the  general 
weKare  and  prosperity.  If  she  had  furnished  many  states- 
men to  the  common  councils,  it  was  because  of  the  general 
confidence  in  their  patriotism,  and  freedom  from  all  selfish 
ambition  and  narrow-minded  notions  of  policy. 

Her  history  from  the  beginning  of  the  controversy  w^ith 
Great  Britain  had  been  one  of  sacrifices  for  the  benefit  of 
all  of  the  states.  She  had  promptly  sent  troops  to  Mas- 
sachusetts on  the  commencement  of  the  war  of  the  Revolu- 
tion in  that  state,  all  of  its  battlefields  were  red  with  the 
blood  of  her  sons ;  and  that  war  had  been  terminated  on  her 
own  soil.  With  a  territory  larger  than  that  of  all  of  the 
other  states  at  the  conclusion  of  peace,  she  had  surrendered 
an  empire  beyond  the  Ohio  river,  for  the  sake  of  Union 
and  for  the  common  benefit;  and  subsequently,  she  had 
consented  to  the  erection  of  the  state  of  Kentucky  within 
her  remaining  territory. 

As  the  acknowledgement  of  the  independence  of  the 
states  had  left  her,  she  would  have  been  amply  able  to  take 
care  of  herself,  and  erect  a  powerful  government  of  her 
own.  yet  she  had  contracted  her  power  and  narrowed  her 
limits  for  what  she  considered  the  common  good.* 

The  Union  had  not  advanced  her  pecuniary  or  material 
interests,  yet,  in  all  of  its  trials,  she  had  been  its  firmest 


*XoTE — The  following  extract  is  from  the  ''History  of  the 
American  Civil  Vv^ar"  by  Professor  Draper,  a  Xorthern  Union 
man,  which  shows  the  nature  of  Virginia's  sacrifices:  ''At  the 
time  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  Virginia  was  the  most 
powerful  of  the  colonies;  she  occupied  a  central  position  and  had 
in  Norfolk  one  of  the  best  harbors  on  the  Atlantic.  She  had  a 
vast  western  territory,  an  imposing  commerce,  and  in  the  produc- 
tion and  export  of  tobacco  not  only  a  source  of  wealth,  but  from 
the  mercantile  connections  it  gave  her  in  Europe,  a  means  of  re- 
finement.   It  was  through  this  circumstance  that  so  many  of  her 


104 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


supporter  and  her  blood  had  been  freely  shed  in  all  of  its 
wars  and  upon  all  of  its  battlefields.  It  was  only  where 
that  Union  was  to  be  perverted  from  its  original  designs 
and  made  the  means  of  humiliating  and  degrading  the 
Southern  states,  herself  included,  that  Virginia  resolved 
upon  severing  the  connection. 

On  the  other  hand,  New  England  had  made  no  sacrifices 
for  the  Union,  and  had  received  only  benefits  from  it.  To 
that  section  the  Union  had  been  a  "paying  operation'*  in 
every  way:  its  fisheries,  commerce  and  factories  had  been 
fostered  and  protected  by  high  bounties  and  duties  until 
its  comparatively  sterile  soil  bloomed  as  a  garden,  while  its 
surplus  population  found  homes  in  the  fertile  region  sur- 
rendered by  Virginia.  Descendants  of  the  Puritans  did 
not  undertake  to  become  ''philanthropists"  until  the  slave 
trade  with  the  South  ceased  to  be  profitable. 

Nothwithstanding  the  benefits  received  by  the  New  Eng- 
land states  from  the  Union,  the  first  proposition  for  its 
dissolution  cam0  from  those  states  when  the  country  was 
engaged  in  a  foreign  war — the  war  of  1812  with  Great 
Britain — because  that  war  was  caused  by  a  temporary  sus- 
pension of  their  commerce.  Most  of  these  states  refused  to 
permit  their  militia  to  be  marched  beyond  their  limits  for 
the  common  defence  and  the  question  of  a  separate  peace 
with  the  public  enemy  was  mooted,  notwithstanding  the 
fact  that  the  war  had  been  undertaken  in  defence  of  com- 


young  men  were  educated  abroad.  When  the  epoch  of  separation 
from  the  mother  country  had  come,  and  the  question  of  Confedera- 
tion arose,  she  might  have  asserted  her  colonial  supremacy;  she 
might  have  been  the  central  power.  Many  of  her  ablest  men  sub- 
sequently thought  that  in  her  voluntary  equalization  with  the 
feeblest  colonies,  the  spontaneous  surrender  of  her  vasi)  domain, 
the  self-abnegation  with  which  she  sacrificed  all  her  privileges  on 
the  altar  of  the  Union,  she  had  made  a  fatal  mistake.  In  her 
action  there  was  something  very  noble." 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


105 


mercial  rights  in  which  New  England  was  principally  in- 
terested. Such  was  the  spirit  manifested  in  that  section 
that  the  British  government  in  declaring  a  blockade  for 
the  coast  of  the  United  States,  for  some  time  exempted  the 
New  England  coast  from  that  blockade  and  did  not  invade 
those  states. 

Upon  the  passage  of  an  act  for  a  general  embargo  in 
1814,  so  as  to  put  a  stop  to  the  contraband  trade  from  New 
England,  the  Massachusetts  legislature  was  flooded  with 
petitions  for  redress  and  protection  against  the  act  of  the 
Federal  government  in  enforcing  the  embargo,  and  a  com- 
mittee to  which  the  petitions  were  referred,  made  a  report 
in  which  the  following  views,  among  others,  were  ex- 
pressed : 

''The  sovereignty  reserved  to  the  states,  was  reserved  to 
protect  the  citizens  from  acts  of  violence  by  the  United 
States,  as  well  as  for  the  purposes  of  domestic  regulation. 
We  spurn  the  idea  that  the  free,  sovereign  and  independent 
State  of  Massachusetts  is  reduced  to  a  mere  municipal  cor- 
poration, without  the  power  to  protect  its  people  or  to  de- 
fend them  from  oppression  from  whatever  quarter  it  comes. 
"Whenever  the  national  compact  is  violated  and  the  citizens 
of  this  state  are  oppressed  by  cruel  and  unauthorized  enact- 
ments, this  legislature  is  bound  to  interpose  its  power  and 
to  wrest  from  the  oppressor  its  victim. ' ' 

To  show  the  spirit  animating  the  people  of  Massachusetts 
in  the  assertion  of  these  doctrines — however  true  they  might 
be  in  principle — when  the  news  was  received  of  the  abdica- 
tion of  Buonaparte  and  the  restoration  of  the  Bourbons  in 
1814 — thus  leaving  the  British  government  at  liberty  to 
employ  all  of  its  forces  against  the  United  States,  the  peo- 
ple of  Massachusetts  as  well  as  of  all  New  England  hailed 
the  news  with  joy  and  exultation,  "as  the  harbinger  of 
peace  and  the  renewal  of  commerce;"  and  the  event  was 


106 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


celebrated  at  Boston  by  a  religious  ceremony  and  a  sermon 
from  the  celebrated  Dr.  Cbanning. 

In  the  fall  of  1814,  the  legislature  of  Massachusetts  in- 
vited a  convention  of  the  New  England  states,  which  as- 
sembled in  Hartford  in  December  of  that  year  and  adopted 
a  series  of  resolutions  in  which  it  was  declared,  among 
other  things,  that,  "In  cases  of  deliberate,  dangereous  and 
palpable  violations  of  the  Constitution,  affecting  the  sover- 
eignty of  a  state  and  the  liberties  of  a  people,  it  was  not 
only  the  right  but  the  duty  also  of  that  state,  to  interpose 
its  authority  for  their  protection,  when  emergencies  occur, 
either  beyond  the  reach  of  the  judicial  tribunal  or  too  press- 
ing to  admit  of  delay  incident  to  their  forms ;  states  which 
have  no  common  umpire  must  be  their  own  judges  and 
execute  their  own  decisions."  The  danger  to  the  Union 
from  these  steps  on  the  part  of  Massachusetts  and  the  other 
New  England  states,  in  a  time  of  public  war,  was  put  to 
an  end  by  the  unexpected  arrival  of  the  news  of  a  treaty 
of  peace ;  this  perhaps  prevented  the  former  state  from  pro- 
ceeding to  assert  her  sovereignty  and  making  a  separate 
peace  with  Great  Britain. 

In  fact  in  1809,  during  the  existence  of  the  troubles 
growing  out  of  the  embargo  passed  before  the  close  of  Mr. 
Jefferson's  administration,  John  Quincy  Adams  had  com- 
municated to  the  government  at  Washington  that  the  ob- 
ject of  the  dominant  party  in  Massachusetts  was,  and  had 
been  for  several  years,  the  establishment  of  a  separate  con- 
federacy, as  he  knew  from  unequivocal  evidence ;  and  that 
in  cas^  of  a  civil  war,  the  aid  of  Great  Britain  to  affect 
that  purpose  would  be  assuredly  resorted  to,  as  it  would  be 
indispensably  necessary  to  the  design. 

There  was  strong  reason  to  suspect  that  during  the  war 
some  secret  arrangement  existed  with  the  enemy,  by  which 
New  England  withheld  from  the  country  the  support  of 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


107 


her  troops  and  her  soil  was  kept  free  from  invasion.  In 
all  the  measures  then  resorted  to  in  order  to  embarrass  the 
government,  Massachusetts  took  the  lead,  yet  when  a  war 
of  invasion  and  subjugation  against  the  Southern  states 
was  waged,  Massachusetts  found  no  constitutional  difficul- 
ties, had  no  scruples  about  sending  her  troops  into  the 
South. 

The  idea  that  any  of  the  Southern  states  resorted  to 
secession  because  of  the  loss  of  the  power  and  patronage 
of  the  government  is  not  founded  on  fact,  as  neither  had 
ever  been  used  for  their  special  benefit  even  when  in  the 
hands  of  Southern  men,  but  it  was  the  Northern  states 
whose  trade  and  factories  had  groT\Ti  up  under  the  foster- 
ing care  of  the  government  throughout  its  whole  history, 
while  the  schools  of  the  Northwest  had  been  richly  endowed 
from  the  public  lands  and  the  gigantic  system  of  railroads 
in  the  same  quarter  had  been  built  up  mainly  from  grants 
of  this  common  property. 

It  has  been  further  alleged  that  it  was  the  slave  power 
which  attempted  to  break  up  the  government,  because  of 
its  defeat,  and  that  that  power  had  hitherto  controlled  the 
government  in  its  interest.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  as  well 
to  state  that  as  far  as  the  executive  branch  of  the  govern- 
ment was  concerned,  there  had  been  nothing  of  which  to 
complain  on  the  part  of  the  Southern  people.  The  great 
difficulty  had  been  with  the  legislative  department,  which 
always  manifested  a  disposition,  more  or  less,  to  be  aggres- 
sive on  the  subject  of  slavery,  and  the  ;^outhem  people 
looked  to  the  executive  to  interpose  its  conservative  in- 
fluence. The  preponderence  of  Northern  men  in  Congress, 
already  increased  by  the  admission  of  Oregon  and  Minne- 
sota, and  soon  further  to  be  increased  by  the  admission  of 
Kansas,  had  become  so  great,  that  the  only  hope  of  the 
South  was  in  the  executive,  and  when  that  branch  of  the 


108 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


government  was  also  sectionalized,  there  was  no  safety  for 
the  weaker  section.  The  people  of  the  South  had  never  asked 
the  government  to  protect  slavery;  they  had  merely  asked 
that  it  should  be  let  alone,  and  left  where  the  Constitution 
left  it. 

In  entering  the  Union,  they  had  stipulated  for  a  govern- 
ment for  certain  general  purposes,  and  not  one  to  regulate 
their  domestic  affairs;  and  they  claimed  that  the  govern- 
ment should  be  confined  to  the  purposes  for  which  it  was 
instituted.  That  government  had  in  no  way  acted  so  as  to 
strengthen  slavery,  and  it  had  not  been  able  to  comply  with 
the  express  stipulation  for  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves. 
Slavery  had  been  excluded  from  an  immense  territory  by 
the  action  of  the  government,  but  it  had  not  been  carried 
to  one  foot  of  territory  by  that  action.  All  of  the  new 
states  east  of  the  Mississippi,  except  Florida,  had  been 
formed  out  of  territory  originally  belonging  to  the  slave 
states,  and  they  had  been  admitted  into  the  Union  under 
that  provision  of  the  Constitution  which  declared  that  such 
states  should  be  admitted  upon  the  same  footing  in  every 
respect  with  the  original  states  and  to  add  to  this  obligation 
not  to  interfere  with  their  domestic  institutions,  the  states 
ceding  the  territory  had  expressly  stipulated  that  there 
should  be  no  interference  with  slavery. 

Louisiana  came  in  by  treaty  as  slave  territory,  and  with 
a  stipulation  for  the  protection  of  the  people  in  their  prop- 
erty. Out  of  that  territory,  three  slave  states  had  been 
formed,  and  they  were  the  last  there  was  any  prospect  of 
forming ;  while  the  free  states  of  Iowa,  Oregon  and  Minne- 
sota had  already  been  admitted  from  the  same  territory 
with  the  prospect  of  the  speedy  admission  of  Kansas  and 
Nebraska  and  the  not  remote  prospect  of  an  indefinite 
number  of  other  free  states  from  the  same  territory. 
Texas  had  come  in  as  a  state  from  the  condition  of 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


109 


an  independent  republic  and  the  measures  leading  to 
her  admission  had  resulted  in  the  acquisition  and  admis- 
sion of  California  as  a  free  state  with  a  prospect  of 
more  free  states  from  the  territory  acquired.  So  that 
in  every  ease  of  the  introduction  of  new  slave  ter- 
ritory into  the  Union,  there  had  been  largely  more  than 
equivalent  in  territory  for  the  formation  of.  free  states  ex- 
cept in  the  case  of  the  slave  territory  of  Florida ;  and  when 
that  was  acquired  the  vastly  larger  and  more  important 
slave  territory  of  Texas  had  been  surrendered.  It  is  not  a 
fact.  then,  in  any  sense  of  the  term,  that  the  government 
had  been  used  for  the  protection  and  growth  of  the  slave 
power.  That  power,  if  it  might  be  called  such,  was  rela- 
tively stronger  the  day  the  Constitution  was  formed  than 
it  was  ever  afterwards. 


CHAPTER  VII 


In  connection  with  this  claim  of  the  slave  power  were  the 
most  shocking  misrepresentations  of  the  condition  of  the 
slaves  themselves  and  of  the  social  relations  of  the  Southern 
people,  in  order  to  array  the  prejudices  of  the  world  against 
their  cause.  This  course  of  misrepresentation  had  long 
been  pursued  before  the  war,  and  was  not  confined  to 
American  writers,  but  many  works  appeared  from  the 
British  press  containing  libels  upon  the  society  of  the 
Southern  states  and  false  views  o^  slavery  as  established 
there.  Such  works  in  both  countries  were  evidently  written 
by  persons  with  prejudiced  minds  or  who  knew^  little 
practically  of  slavery  as  it  existed  in  the  South.  Such  was 
the  intolerance  of  the  public  sentiment  which  had  been 
fostered  in  both  countries  upon  the  subject,  that  no  candid 
and  impartial  account  of  the  workings  of  domestic  slavery 
as  it  existed  in  the  Southern  states  would  be  received  with 
the  slightest  favor,  whilst  the  exaggerated  accounts  of 
cruelty  practiced  by  the  slave-owners,  and  consequent  suf- 
ferings of  the  slaves  were  eagerly  accepted  as  the  truth. 

A  very  striking  evidence  of  this  prejudice  was  furnished 
by  the  reception  given  to  the  works  of  two  female  writers 
not  many  years  since.  The  one.  Miss  Harriett  Beecher,  later 
Mrs.  Stowe,  wrote  a  work  of  fiction  called  "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin,"  containing  misrepresentations  of  slavery  and 
slanders  upon  Southern  society.  Drawing  upon  a  fertile 
imagination  and  pandering  to  the  prejudices  of  the  unin- 
formed, she  published  the  book,  which  had  a  great  run  in 
Europe  as  well  as  America,  and  was  translated  into  almost 
all  of  the  continental  languages.  The  incidents  contained 
in  the  book  were  either  erroneous  in  point  of  fact  or  greatly 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


111 


exaggerated,  but  the  book  itself  was  still  more  untrue  as 
a  picture  of  Southern  society  and  slavery,  and  would  have 
been  a  misrepresentation  if  every  fact  contained  in  it  had 
been  true  in  isolated  cases.  But  the  book  was  received  as  a 
true  and  faithful  picture  of  society  and  slavery  in  the  South, 
not  merely  by  the  agitators  of  abolition,  but  by  that  very 
considerable  class  of  persons  in  the  world  who  allow  others 
to  do  their  thinking,  and  when  the  authoress  visited  Great 
Britain,  she  was  treated  with  great  attention  and  exten- 
sively feted  by  the  nobility,  gentry  and  others.  The  view 
of  Southern  slavery  which  she  drew  is  perhaps  accepted  by 
nine-tenths  of  the  otherwise  well  informed  persons  in 
Europe. 

In  remarkable  contrast  to  Miss  Beecher 's  case,  was  that  of 
Miss  Murray,  a  lady  of  talents  and  refinement,  who  held 
the  position  of  maid  of  honor  to  Queen  Victoria.  Miss 
Murray  visited  the  United  States  as  a  tourist  with  all  of 
her  predilections  against  slavery,  but  she  happened  to  be 
one  of  those  persons  who,  not  satisfied  with  hearsay  report, 
took  the  necessary  trouble  to  inform  herself  intelligently 
upon  the  subject.  In  the  course  of  her  travels,  she  went  into 
the  Southern  states,  where  she  remained  for  some  time  as  a 
guest  on  some  of  the  plantations.  She  had  the  opportunity  of 
observing  the  workings  of  domestic  slavery  as  it  actually 
existed  and  in  all  of  its  details,  and  she  availed  herself  of 
that  opportunity  to  make  her  own  reflections.  In  letters  to 
friends  at  home  she  gave  the  result  of  her  actual  observa- 
tions and  upon  her  return  to  England  was  induced  to  pub- 
lish her  letters.  These  letters  represented  slavery  in  the 
Southern  states  in  a  very  different  light  from  that  in  which 
it  was  accustomed  to  be  presented  to  the  British  public,  and 
the  consequence  was  that  Miss  Murray  was  notified  by  the 
ministry  that  it  was  not  desirable  that  she  should  longer 
occupy  the  relation  she  held  to  the  Queen,  as  the  views  she 


112 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


expressed  in  regard  to  slavery  were  not  consonant  with  the 
policy  of  the  British  government;  so  she  was  retired. 

This  illustrates  the  difference  in  the  reception  of  two 
works  on  the  subject  of  slavery  given  by  the  British  public : 
one  a  work  of  fiction  from  a  prejudiced  writer,  the  other  a 
matter-of-fact  account  of  an  eye  witness  of  what  she  under- 
took to  describe. 

If  British  ministers  could  thus  view  the  subject  and  be 
guilty  of  the  injustice  they  perpetrated  in  Miss  Murray's 
case,  what  could  be  expected  of  the  great  mass  of  British 
readers  ?  It  is  hard  to  conceive  how  the  glory  or  prosperity 
of  a  nation  could  be  advanced  by  giving  currency  to  falla- 
cies, or  suppressing  the  truth  in  regard  to  the  actual  condi- 
tion of  African  slavery  in  the  Southern  states. 

'It  would  seem  that  as  Great  Britain  had  had  so  much 
to  do  with  fostering  the  institution  in  those  states,  it  would 
be  rather  gratifying,  than  otherwise,  to  its  ministers  and 
its  people,  to  know  that  the  descendants  of  those  who  had 
been  ravished  from  their  native  country  by  the  cupidity  of 
their  predecessors,  were  in  a  contented  and  comfortable  con- 
dition. But  such  was  not  then  "the  policy  of  the  govern- 
ment" and  perhaps  the  philanthropic  disciple  of  Exeter 
Hall  who  callously  passed  by  the  misery,  want  and  im- 
morality at  her  own  door  in  the  great  city  of  London, 
while  she  shed  tears  over  the  imaginary  woes  pictured  by 
Miss  Beecher,  would  have  been  equally  as  indignant  as  the 
British  ministers  with  Miss  Murray  for  attempting  to  dis- 
abuse her  of  the  delusion  which  caused  those  tears  to  flow. 

Such  is,  and  perhaps  ever  will  be,  the  character  of  hu- 
man philanthropy,  that  it  troubles  itself  more  about  the 
sufferings  which  exist  a  long  way  off  or  only  in  imagina- 
tion, than  those  which  are  before  its  eyes.  One  weeps  over 
the  trials  of  the  hero  or  heroine  in  a  novel  or  a  play,  while 
we  pass  the  miserable  child  of  want  and  sin  in  the  street 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


113 


with  perfect  indifference.  If  slavery  did  not  have  its  evils 
and  its  wrongs,  it  would  not  be  a  human  institution,  and 
as  long  as  "man's  inhumanity  to  man  makes  countless 
thousands  mourn,"  so  long  will  evils  and  wrongs  exist  in 
every  relation  of  human  society.  These  exist  in  the  rela- 
tion of  governor  and  governed,  parent  and  child,  husband 
and  wife,  master  and  servant,  employer  and  employed, 
neighbor  and  neighbor,  and  are  not  excluded  even  from  the 
church. 

It  is  not  pretended  therefore  that  some  masters  did  not 
abuse  their  servants,  but  these  were  rare  instances,  more 
perhaps  than  in  any  other  relation  of  like,  and  if  for  no 
other  reason,  the  great  mass  of  masters  were  induced  to 
treat  their  slaves  well,  because  it  was  their  interest  to  do  so. 
Let  any  one  compare  the  condition  of  the  African  in  his 
native  land,  with  that  of  the  slaves  of  the  South  before  the 
violent  abolition  of  slavery,  and  then  say  whether  that 
institution,  which  had  produced  such  a  vast  improvement 
in  his  condition  was  so  great  a  wrong  after  all.* 


*ISroTE — Professor  Draper,  in  Ms  ''History  of  the  American  Civil 
War ' '  thus  represents  the  condition  of  the  negro  in  his  native  land. 
''The  Negro  in  Africa." 

"On  the  west  coast  of  Africa,  the  true  negro-land,  the  thermo- 
meter not  infrequently  stands  at  120°  in  the  shade.  For  months 
together  it  remains,  night  and  day,  above  80°.  The  year  is  divided 
into  the  dry  and  the  rainy  season;  the  latter  setting  in  with  an  in- 
cessant drizzle,  continues  until  May.  It  culminates  in  the  most 
awful  thunderstorms  and  overwhelming  rains.  This  is  particularly  the 
case  in  the  mountains.  When  the  dry  season  has  fairly  begun  a 
pestiferous  miasm  is  engendered  from  the  vast  quantities  of  vege- 
table matter  brought  down  into  the  low  lands  by  torrents.  From 
the  fevers  thus  arising  the  negroes  themselves  suffer  severely. 

"Moisture  and  heat,  thus  so  fatal  in  their  consequences  to  man, 
give  to  that  country  its  amazing  vegetable  luxuriance.  For 
hundreds  of  square  miles  there  is  an  impenetrable  jungle,  infested 
with  intolerable  swarms  of  musquitoes.  The  interior  is  magnifi- 
ciently  wooded.  The  mangrove  thickets  that  line  the  river  banks 
upon  the  coast  are  here  replaced  by  a  dark  evergreen  verdure, 
interspersed  with  palms  and  aloes.    A  rank  herbage  obstructs  the 


114 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


The  most  conclusive  answer  to  all  the  slanders  against 
Southern  slave  owners  is  to  be  found  in  the  rapid  multipli- 
cation of  the  slaves  by  natural  increase,  which  could  not 
have  taken  place  if  such  barbarities  had  been  practiced  or 
such  immorality  had  existed,  as  has  been  represented. 
Our  detractors  have  convicted  themselves  of  the  slanders 
they  have  uttered  by  taking  the  Southern  slave  from 
the  Cotton  fields  to  the  ballot  box  and  vested  him  with 
all  the  privileges  of  an  American  citizen.  If  the  insti- 
tution of  slavery  has  so  tutored  the  negro  that  immediately 
his  bonds  are  loosened,  he  is  qualified  for  the  privileges  of 
the  ballot  box,  what  a  civilizing  tendency  that  institution 
must  have  had.  If  on  the  contrary  that  institution  has 
kept  him  in  utter  ignorance  of  moral  and  Christian  duty 
and  made  him  the  cringing,  degraded  creature  he  has  been 
represented,  what  a  monster  must  be  he  who  proposes  to 
vest  in  the  untutored  savage  the  power  of  governing  others 
while  the  white  man  is  disfranchised.  In  his  native  land 
he  has  never  reached  the  dignity  of  a  civilized  being,  and 


course  of  the  streams.  The  crocodile,  hippopotamus,  pelican  find 
here  a  suitable  abode.  Monkeys  swarm  in  the  woods;  in  the  more 
gloomy  recesses  live  the  champanzee,  gorilla  and  other  anthropoid 
apes  approaching  man  most  closely  in  stature  and  habits  of  life. 
In  the  open  land — the  prairie  of  equatorial  Africa — game  is  in- 
frequent; there  are  a  few  antelopes  and  horned  cattle,  but  no  horses. 
Man — or  perhaps  more  truly  woman — is  the  only  beast  of  burden. 

* '  Plantains,  sweet  potatoes,  cassava,  pumpkins,  ground-nuts, 
Indian  corn,  the  flesh  of  the  deer,  antelope,  bear,  snake,  furnish  to 
the  negro,  his  food.  He  lives  in  a  hut  constructed  of  bamboo  or 
flakes  of  bark,  thatched  with  matting  or  palm  leaves.  His  villages 
are  often  pallisaded.  Too  lazy,  except  when  severely  pressed,  to 
attend  to  the  labors  of  the  field,  he  compels  his  wives  to  plant  the 
roots  or  seeds,  and  gather  the  scanty  harvest.  In  hunting  and  in 
war,  his  main  occupation,  he  relies  upon  cunning  and  will  follow 
his  prey  with  surprising  agility,  crawling  like  a  snake  prone  upon 
the  ground.  He  has  little  or  no  idea  of  property  in  land;  slaves 
are  his  currency;  he  makes  his  purchase  and  pays  his  debts  with 
them.  'A  slave  is  a  note  of  hand  that  may  be  discounted  or 
pawned.   He  is  a  bill  of  exchange  that  carries  himself  to  his  desti- 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


115 


he  has  never  been  civilized  until  transplanted  into  slavery. 
Even  till  this  day  there  are  native  Africans  who  continue  — 
in  a  state  of  barbarism  despite  the  civilizing  influence  of 
the  British  government  and  the  efforts  of  missionaries. 
In  the  western  country  away  from  the  coast  and  civiliza- 
tion, tribes  of  the  ''hinterland"  practice  cannibalistic  rites, 
the  victim  being  preferably  a  blood  relation  of  the  sacrificer. 
The  unfortunates  are  kidnapped,  then  with  ghoulish  cere- 
mony and  weird  incantations  they  are  frightfully  muti- 
lated; while  life  still  remains  a  demoniacal  feast  is  held 
and  human  flesh  consumed  to  offset  the  ''Ju-Ju"  or  spell 
of  evil  omen.  Then  the  victim  is  put  out  of  his  misery  and 
buried  so  that  the  white  man  shall  know  nothing  of  the 
mysteries  ages  old,  which  the  tribes  of  Africa  revere ;  many 
of  the  victims  are  young  women  and  girls,  captured  by 
members  of  secret  societies  and  taken  to  some  remote  spot 
in  the  bush. 

Whatever  of  eminence  any  individual  of  the-  race  has 
attained,  is  due  directly  or  indirectly  to  the  civilizing  in- 


nation,  and  pays  a  debt  bodily.  He  is  a  tax  that  walks  corporeally 
into  tlie  chieftain's  treasury.' 

''Ferocious  in  his  amours,  the  African  negro  has  no  sentiment 
of  love.  The  more  wives  he  possesses  the  richer  he  is.  If  he  in- 
clines to  traffic,  each  additional  father-in-law  is  an  additional  trad- 
ing connection;  if  devoted  to  war,  an  ally.  His  animal  passions 
too  often  disdain  all  such  mercenary  suggestions;  he  brings  home 
new  wives  for  the  sake  of  new  gratifications.  Fond  of  ornaments, 
his  prosperity  is  displayed  in  thick  bracelets  and  anklets  of  iron 
or  brass.  An  old  European  hat  or  a  tattered  dress-coat,  without 
any  other  article  of  clothing  is  a  sufficient  badge  of  kingship.  He 
inclines  to  nocturnal  habits.  He  will  spend  all  the  night  lolling 
with  his  companions  on  the  ground  at  a  blazing  fire,  though  the 
thermometer  may  be  at  more  than  80°,  occupying  himself  in  smok- 
ing native  tobacco,  drinking  palm  wine  and  telling  stories  about 
witches  and  spirts.  He'  is  an  inverate  gambler,  a  jester  and  a 
buffoon.  He  knows  nothing  of  hero-worship;  his  religion  is  a 
worship  of  fetiches. 

''They  are  such  objects  as  the  fingers  and  tails  of  monkeys, 
human  hair,  skin,  teeth,  bones,  old  nails,  copper  chains,  claws  and 


116 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


fluence  of  the  institution  of  slavery.  It  was  the  master  of 
slaves  who  accomplished  the  greatest  missionary  success 
and  the  progress  of  his  ward  since  is  due  to  the  training 
and  influence  of  the  past. 

Foreign  people  have  said  that  if  the  Confederate  Govern- 
ment had  freed  the  slaves,  it  might  have  been  recognized 
by  European  nations.  Such  persons  should  recall  that 
when  Don  Quixote  freed  the  galley  slaves  he  had  then  to 
defend  himself  against  them — they  would  see  the  absurdity 
of  such  an  idea.  What  could  the  people  of  the  South  have 
done  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war  if  3,000,000  slaves  had 
been  turned  loose  among  them  and  the  whole  labor  system 
of  the  country  deranged? 

Our  victors  say  that  having  submitted  ''to  the  arbitra- 
ment of  arms,"  and  having  been  overcome,  the  question  of 
right  has  been  decided  against  us,  and  that  we  are  a  con- 
quered people  who  must  submit  to  the  fate  of  the  con- 
quered; but  though  the  gordian  knot  was  cut  with  the 
sword,  constitutional  questions  cannot  be  solved  in  the  same 


skulls  of  birds,  seeds  of  plants.  He  believes  that  evil  spirits  walk 
at  the  sunset  hour  by  the  edge  of  forests;  he  adores  the  devil,  who 
is  thought  to  haunt  burial-grounds  and,  in  mortal  terror  of  his 
enmity,  leaves  food  for  him  in  the  woods.  He  welcomes  the  new 
moon  by  dancing  in  her  shine.  AVhatever  misfortune  or  sickness 
befalls  him,  he  imputes  to  sorcery  and  punishes  the  detected 
wizard  or  witch  with  death.  He  determines  guilt  by  the  ordeal  of 
fire:  the  accused  who  can  seize  a  red-hot  copper  ring  without  being 
burned  is  innocent.  His  medicine-man — a  wind  raiser  and  rain- 
maker— pursues  his  main  business  of  exorcism  in  a  head-dress  of 
black  feathers,  with  a  string  of  spirit-charms  around  his  neck  and 
a  basket  of  snake-bone  incantations.  The  more  advanced  tribes 
have  already  risen  to  idol  worship;  they  adore  grotesque  figures 
of  the  human  form,  and  following  the  course  through  which  intel- 
ligence in  other  races  has  passed,  they  have  wooden  gods  who  can 
speak  and  nod  and  wink. 

In  this  deplorable,  this  benighted  condition,  the  negro  neverthe- 
less shows  tokens  of  a  capacity  for  better  things.  He  is  an  eager 
trader,  and  knows  the  value  of  his  ebony,  bar-wood,  beeswax,  palm 
oil,  ivory.    He  has  learned  how  to  cheat;  nay,  more,  infrequently 


THE  HERITAGE  OP  THE  SOUTH 


117 


way,  such  a  view  would  but  prove  the  wrong  of  the  whole 
doctrine  of  coercion.  The  Constitution  created  by  sovereign 
states,  whatever  the  powers  delegated,  could  never  have 
contemplated  the  possibility  of  one  of  those  states  being  re- 
duced to  the  condition  of  a  conquered  province.  That 
Constitution  was  as  binding  in  those  states,  which  remained 
after  the  secession  of  the  Southern  states  as  before,  and  it 
was  as  much  an  outrage  to  make  war  upon  those  latter  for 
the  act  of  secession,  as  it  would  have  been  to  have  destroyed 
their  existence  as  states  while  they  remained  in  the  Union. 

It  is  true  that  the  South  claimed  to  be  a  sovereign  inde- 
pendent people  after  their  withdrawal,  and  were  so  by 
every  principle  of  right  and  justice,  but  that  position  did 
not  authorize  the  making  of  war  against  them.  A  counter- 
claim was  that  the  seceding  states  had  no  right  to  with- 
draw, and  therefore  those  arrayed  in  opposition  under- 
took to  compel  them  to  submission  to  the  rule  and  laws  of 
the  Union:  upon  that  ground  alone  could  they  justify  the 
war.    They  were  the  aggressors  and  disregarded  the  Con- 


he  can  out-cheat  the  white  man.  He  can  adulterate  the  caoutchouc 
and  other  products  he  brings  down  to  the  coast  ana  pass  them  off 
as  pure.  His  color  secures  him  from  the  detection  of  a  blush  when 
he  lies.  Though  utterly  ignorant  of  any  conception  of  art,  he  is 
not  unskillful  in  the  manufacture  of  cooking  pots  and  tobacco  pipes 
of  clay;  he  has  a  bellows-forge  of  his  own  invention;  he  can  reduce 
iron  from  its  ores  and  manufacture  it.  He  makes  shields  of 
elephants'  hide,  cross-bows,  and  other  weapons  of  war.  But  in  the 
construction  of  musical  instruments  his  skill  is  chiefly  displayed. 
From  drums  of  goat-skins,  from  harps  and  gourds,  he  extracts  their 
melancholy  sounds  and  disturbs  the  nocturnal  African  forests  with 
his  plaintive  melodies. 

''It  has  been  afiSrmed  by  those  who  have  known  them  well,  that 
the  equatorial  negro  tribes  do  not  increase  but  tend  to  die  out 
spontaneously.  This  is  attributed  to  infanticide  and  to  the  ravages 
of  miasmic  "fever,  which  in  its  most  m.alignant  form  will  often 
destroy  its  victim  in  a  single  day.  Even  though  quinine  be  taken 
as  a  prophylactic  no  white  man  can  enter  their  country  with  im- 
punity.   The  night  dews  are  absolutely  mortal." 


118 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


stitution  and  the  Union  and  they  also  were  the  ones  who 
violated  the  principle  and  precept  of  that  Constitution, 
which  they  were  sworn  to  support  and  defend. 

The  doctrine  has  been  broached  that  the  highest  law 
that  can  exist  is  that  established  by  force  of  arms.  That  the 
red-handed  conquerors  or  the  armed,  robber  on  the  high- 
way should  assert  this,  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  but  when 
it  comes  from  the  men  who  have  been  compelled  to  yield 
to  force  of  arms  while  struggling  for  the  right,  the  mantle 
of  charity  should  be  allowed  to  fall  over  the  weakness  which 
cannot  resist  the  temptations  of  adversity. 

In  regard  to  this  question  of  submitting  our  rights  to 
**the  arbitrament  of  arms,"  much  irrational  language  has 
been  used  and  very  erroneous  opinions  have  been  expressed 
as  to  the  result.  There  was  never  a  greater  mistake  of 
terms  or  perversion  of  language  than  that  made  in  saying 
that  the  Southern  states  submitted  their  right  to  be  with- 
drawn from  the  Union  to  the  arbitrament  of  arms  or  hav- 
ing lost,  that  the  question  of  right  has  been  decided  against 
them.  Those  states  proposed  to  withdraw  peaceably,  tend- 
ered a  peaceful  solution  of  all  of  the  questions  which  might 
arise  out  of  their  former  relations  to  the  United  States 
government.  That  government  declared  a  war  of  coercion, 
and  the  Southern  states  of  necessity  resorted  to  arms  to  de- 
fend their  rights  and  homes  when  most  wrongfully  and 
unjustly  invaded.  In  no  sense*  can  they  be  said  to  have 
submitted  any  of  their  rights  to  the  arbitrament  of  arms  any 
more  than  the  traveller  on  the  highway  submits  his  money 
to  the  arbitrament  of  arms  between  himself  and  the  robber, 
and  the  result  of  the  war  decided  no  question  of  principle, 
but  simply  furnished  another  instance  of  the  fact  that  in 
this  world,  the  truth  does  not  always  prevail  and  that  might 
is  often  more  powerful  than  right. 


THE  HERITAGE  OF  THE  SOUTH 


119 


Not  only  has  the  question  of  right  not  been  decided  by 
the  arbitrament  of  arms,  but  the  proposition  that  "The 
voice  of  the  people  is  the  voice  of  God"  is  no  better  es- 
tablished now  than  on  that  memorable  occasion  when  the 
people  cried  ' '  crucify  him !  crucify  him ! ' ' 


ERRATA 

Page  51,  line  17— 

"obitu"  should  be  "obitur." 

Page  58,  lines  15  and  19— 

"Elden''  should  be  "Eldon." 

Page  77,  line  li- 
the letter  ''a"  should  be  inserted  before  the  word  "felony." 

Page  82,  line  26— 

"interferfence"  should  be  "interference." 


d066t^tf00a 


